—

Mashups are one of the great art forms of our time.  Although remixes, mashups, sampling, and collage predate the internet by decades (if not centuries), easy, accessible digital tools have allowed anyone to remix videos, music, and photographs into their own original works.  Mashup culture has produced fantastic music , critical video, and delightful cultural artifacts of all kinds.

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

This past year has been most eventful. You can say many things about the sharing world, but you can’t say life is boring here.

And, as our calendar year is close to its end, I’m thinking back on some of the important events that happened this year:

1. The year, of course, started off with fireworks: the Megaupload shutdown, an operation that used at least as much force and international resources as the attack on Bin Laden.

And there have been interesting developments throughout the year. Especially the scandal in New Zealand, where the PM apologized to Dotcom.

2. Also in January, the internet flexed its muscle to stop SOPA. Firefox, Wikipedia, Google and WordPress were among the major contributors to the operation. Many called this event “the coming of age of the internet”. And it was the internet corporations’ first major political win.

3. Usenet has been very present in the news, with many operators having to shut down, following multiple types of pressure.

And we found out that one of the top anti-piracy organizations used to be a Usenet operator. Changing sides is easy when it’s only about the money.

4. US Thanksgiving brought us a nice surprise: the Republican’s Study Committee published a great Policy Brief on copyright reform. Then they withdrew it. But those shared ideas will remain forever in our minds(and our hard drives).

5. We’ve heard news from the future. A decentralized BitTorrent network named Tribler. Those Dutch are always up to something good. And then we heard about RetroShare.

6. In April, UK ISP’s were ordered to block multiple websites. Throughout the year, multiple local instances of MPAA/RIAA worked to obtain similar measures in courts.
ref: https://torrentfreak.com/uk-isps-must-censor-the-pirates-bay-high-court-rules-120430/

And then general and specific proxies made the blocks irrelevant.

7. In April, ISP iiNET won over AFACT in Australia. ISPs are not liable for what their users do.

8. In July, in Europe, ACTA was declared dead by the EU Parliament vote. This happened after many citizens went to the streets in a plurality of cities around Europe. Seeing citizens take responsibility and action for their future freedoms is a great moment.

9. Also in July, Google launched its transparency report.

Then things went exponential and close to 4 million search results get delisted each week at this moment.

10. In August, the US Gov returned Rojadirecta’s domain name (after 18 months).

11. Universal, the horrible music label that killed many startups including the YouTube alternative Veoh, sued Grooveshark. Grooveshark v. Universal.

12. Demonoid and several other important bittorrent sites shut down.

So, all in all, for all the drama and events, not much has changed. Some sites are gone, some sites are new, but business goes on as usual in the file sharing world. And we’ve seen a glimpse of the future. And that future looks encrypted.

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

Gottfrid’s arrest

Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Anakata, was arrested in his Riverside Phnom Penh apartment late August. I was personally at the Cadillac Bar located on the ground floor of the same building where Gottfrid lived. I have visited him on several occasions after I moved to Phnom Penh in January.

It was nothing unusual for Kenny, Gottfrid’s friend and landlord working at the Cadillac Bar, to ask me if I would be going up to see him. This time was the first time that I went to the Cadillac Bar alone and didn’t visit Gottfrid. Perhaps I chose not to because of what they call ‘gut feeling’. I don’t remember feeling anything strange, but for the very first time I decided not to drop by.

The very next day I caught a bad fever and called in sick to work. I didn’t hear about the news of Gottfrid’s arrest until Saturday when a friend of mine called asking what I knew. I was still laying sick in bed, but as soon as I heard what had happened I went down to the Cadillac Bar to try and figure out what was going on.

When I reached Cadillac I immediately understood that I had been told the truth. Cadillac Bar owner Kenny would usually greet me with an enthusiastic smile upon my arrival. This time he sat pale white at the bar and didn’t even turn around to look at me when saying hello. The bar was however more crowded than I expected and I figured that it was probably for the best to not bother asking any questions. I finished my pasta dish, paid the bill and said goodbye to Kenny before heading back home.

A mutual friend of mine and Gottfrid, who was in contact with his mother, spoke to me a couple of days later and asked me to speak to Kenny so we could organize something and also stream information between here and there more efficiently to keep Gottfrid’s parents updated. We cleared the trust issues and started talking.

I learned that Kenny was actually the best friend of Gottfrid available at this time. From the moment that Gottfrid was detained Kenny would go to the Ministry of Interior’s Counter Terrorism department on a daily basis to ensure that Gottfrid would meet a friendly face. He would bring food, soda and books. Everyday Kenny came and asked Gottfrid if he had been told anything, been asked questions or been visited by someone. Gottfrid was only visited on the first day of arrival by the Swedish embassy but they never asked anything or told him his rights or what was going on.

At this point in time the news had already hit the global mainstream press. Gottfrid’s Swedish lawyer, Ola Salomonsson, had no idea what was going on. Initially the Cambodian authorities said that Gottfrid had been detained due to breaking local laws and that after he had been detained they realized that he was internationally wanted by Interpol. The underlying tone was that he had been found merely by coincidence. Later it turned out that they had arrested him in connection to his visa expiring.

The day after Kenny received the verification that I was OK to speak with, 5th September, he brought me to visit him at the Ministry of Interior. I left my phone in the office due to paranoia and when we arrived and I saw the big sign on the building with a Khmer sentence translated to Counter Terrorism Department. I immediately understood that this was something bigger than an expired visa. Even though his passport had been revoked when he became internationally wanted by Interpol, Gottfrid still had a valid visa until the day of his arrest.

Inside the Counter Terrorism Department

We entered the building and were put in a room with three huge CRT monitors connected to one desktop PC each facing the wall on the opposite side of the room. We were ordered to place the meals that we brought with us on a table with the plastic bag containing canned Fanta. The officers took no interest in the books that we brought for Gottfrid. We were then told that we may go into the hallway again and continue into the room where Gottfrid was held.

The door was already open and there were approximately eight officers present and additional ones lurking in the shadows around the hallway. Kenny went in first and I followed. When Gottfrid saw me he immediately looked from officer to officer in what seemed like an attempt to figure out if there was something special related to my presence. I came in muttering “so this is where the terrorists hold the anti-terrorist.”

The room looked like a classical classroom with lined up benches. Gottfrid was sitting at the front, where a teacher would stand in a school environment, in a woven tree chair tilted allowing him to lay with his back at 45 degrees and his legs at 90. He was sitting upright with his legs crossed wearing a blanket. The officers weren’t freezing but Gottfrid was obviously not enjoying the forced air condition.

The second we started to speak Swedish with each other all officers but one left the room. A few minutes later they rushed back in and told us that we only had five minutes more. We headed out and passed the guard at the gate a $1 bill.

No cooperation

The following day when Kenny returned with all the regularities he was denied entrance. The officers at the Ministry of Interior said to him that Gottfrid had been transported to the Swedish embassy. We called the Swedish embassy who did not pick up the phone. We called the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs who hung up in our ears. Later the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Gottfrid’s mother over the phone, when she specifically asked for it, that he was in the ministry.

At this point Gottfrid still hadn’t been reached by his lawyer Ola Salomonsson and Gottfrid was never offered a lawyer by the Swedish embassy. Swedish authorities told Swedish press that Gottfrid was being extradited because he was wanted by Interpol to serve his one year sentence which he was convicted to in The Pirate Bay trial.

The Swedish authorities lied through their teeth. Gottfrid wasn’t being extradited, he was being deported under the Cambodian immigration law. But people who are deported can choose where to be sent and also leave the country by their own free will. Deported people also have the right to fight the decision in Cambodian court. Of course, Gottfrid was never informed about this by the Swedish embassy. They also forgot to inform Gottfrid’s Swedish lawyer.

Suddenly we became very stressed about the whole situation. Gottfrid needed to know that he had the right to a Cambodian attorney and to fight in court and he also had to be informed that it was up to him to make these demands. The Swedish embassy never told him this, as later confirmed by Anne Höglund: the ambassador who signed the $60 USM aid deal.

Meeting with the ambassador inside the Swedish embassy

I went to the Swedish embassy in Phnom Penh on the 10th floor in the Phnom Penh Tower. I felt really helpless and didn’t know what to do. I felt desperate to have a face directing my questions and frustration towards. Since the information that we had available indicated that Gottfrid was captured in the same embassy that refused him his rights, my initial idea was to go there and pass him my message as loudly as I possibly could through the walls.

I reached the reception who asked me why I was present. I told them I was there as a friend of Gottfrid’s uninformed parents and soon enough I met Swedish Ambassador Anne Höglund.

I found her quite rude for never inviting me to any form of office room or similar, instead she had me standing in the reception asking her questions. She told me the opposite of what we had heard from the Cambodian Ministry of Interior and the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Gottfrid had never been there. I explained in a very serious tone that this was a matter of human rights, that he hasn’t been convicted for anything but The Pirate Bay, and that it is their job to do what they had not done.

We were interrupted by around six people who came into the embassy to speak to Anne Höglund. I let her know that our discussion was not over even though she didn’t assign another agent to handle my complaint and Tom Abrahamsson, head of administrative and consular matters at the Swedish Embassy in Phnom Penh, had coincidentally gone on vacation to Sihanoukville this particular day. Gottfrid’s mother was informed that Tom was the person that had visited Gottfrid. He hadn’t left the country, just traveled four hours out of the city, but was entirely impossible to contact.

Returning to the embassy, this time with backup

I left the embassy and came back with Gottfrid’s mother’s Cambodian legal representative: Mr. Sok Sam Oeun. Sok Sam Oeun is currently the Executive Director at the Cambodian Defenders Project. In 1995 he won the Award of Defenders of the Year presented by California Defender Association and in 2002 he won the International Human Right Awards presented by the American Bar Association. He has over 20 years of experience in human rights and is also an expert on the international relationship between Sweden and Cambodia. He was early to be quoted in some articles regarding Gottfrid’s deportation. I brought him with me back to the Swedish embassy.

When we arrived they were obviously tired of me already. Unluckily for them I am a Swedish citizen and thus they cannot deny speaking to me. And this time I also brought my backup: Mr. Sok Sam Oeun.

I went through the process of informing the reception about what I wanted. At one point the Khmer receptionist picked up a phone and pointed at another one on my side of the protective glass. I picked it up and heard him say something, but figured it was a too long a sentence for me. He shouted at me asking if it worked. I shook my head. He pointed at one on the opposite side of the desk. I picked it up and he asked me again if it worked. No luck. He pressed some extra buttons which I figured was actually required to connect to the proper phone on the line and I picked it up.

The receptionist stared deeply into my eyes and said “you’re here regarding Gottfrid, right?”. I told him that was correct. Without blinking and still staring at me he then proceeded by asking “the fool that got arrested, right?”. I was in a bad position to throw a fight over his wording and simply confirmed once again. “I will ask for permission and then we will see.”

Before 10 minutes had passed Anne Höglund came into the waiting room. “Oh, it’s you again”, she muttered in Swedish, clearly unhappy over me. “Yes”, I said, “but this time I brought backup”, and presented her Mr. Sok Sam Oeun.

I said that since this was a very high-profile case we must make sure that everything is legally correct, and of course that Gottfrid’s parents were very worried. When Sok Sam Oeun spoke to Anne Höglund and asked her questions she quickly fell into absolute defense mode. She crossed her arms and her every movement increased in speed. She was very stressed. She continued to say all sorts of truly absurd things such as “he does not need a lawyer” and that they had done everything they have to do. I deceptively nodded and it seemed like she considered Sok Sam Oeun to be the bad guy and me to be the good guy in the situation. She was subconsciously looking for me to agree with her and I met her with a confirming face conforming her to continue her lies.

Anne told us that in “every normal case” the Swedish embassy would provide the suspect a list of attorneys from which they could freely pick their defense. I told her that it was absolutely irrelevant how they handle normal cases because if it was a normal case then Gottfrid wouldn’t be held by counter terrorist police over an expired visa. An expired visa in Cambodia usually doesn’t generate more problems other than having to pay a fine when leaving the country.

Brushed aside

She denied that Gottfrid had ever been in the embassy and said that this idea was absurd. She got stuck in a loop, I think she repeated her nervous “no” at least a dozen times before asking “Who said that?”

Apparently we needed to speak to the Cambodian authorities because this was a police issue. Anne said it was an issue handled 100 % by the police and that the embassy had no interest in this. “Even if he has disappeared?”, Sok Sam Oeun asked her. I told her that right now we have a situation where the Ministry of Interior, Gottfrid’s last known location, said that Gottfrid was in the embassy and the embassy is saying that they don’t know where he is. I never told her that we had also heard the same information independently from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and that the information that Anne was giving us was the exact opposite of that.

Anne stood her ground: she didn’t know anything, didn’t understand why we were at the embassy, and was not willing to cooperate with us in an attempt to figure out Gottfrid’s whereabouts. She made herself entirely unavailable to us so we parted.

According to Cambodian law Gottfrid’s parents’ attorney has the same right to speak to Gottfrid as Gottfrid’s own attorney, if he would’ve had one. Anne obviously either forgot or ignored this and she was never interested in respecting Sok Sam Oeun’s authority. The way the case unfolded it is very obvious that the Swedish embassy lied to us, tried to convince us that Gottfrid was not in need of a lawyer and denied his fundamental human rights both in Sweden and in Cambodia.

Gottfrid’s mother got similar information from the authorities in Sweden. She was told that the process of deportation would not be a juridical process as such and thus no lawyer would be involved. Anne wanted to convince us into believing that Gottfrid was detained because of his invalid visa.

Either Anne Höglund is entirely incompetent or she tried misleading us and denied us our rights because she knew that we had the legal possibility to take the matter to court and possibly have Gottfrid sent to another country other than Sweden, since he was after all being deported and not extradited. Perhaps Anne is an incompetent liar who fails to understand why someone who is locked up by counter terrorists needs access to a lawyer whether he’s charged for a crime or not.

The Wikileaks connection

After the coincidence with the $60 USM aid package granted by Sweden to Cambodia was settled, Anders Jörle, spokesperson for the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the media that the connection between Gottfrid and the money was “ridiculously far-fetched” and that nobody sentenced to one year in prison is worth that amount of money.

Of course he never told the press exactly where Gottfrid was locked up in Phnom Penh or that parts of the case for what he is being kidnapped for is classed secret by the Swedish Ministry of Justice.

He also forgot that somebody that has been openly involved in both The Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks might be worth it. Everything around Gottfrid must truly just be a big coincidence. We’re just waiting for them to stop shaking and crossing their arms and show us exactly how they’ve acted correctly according to current national and international laws before we can truly believe them. Until these things are cleared up and proven to be correct I’m going to refer to this incident as the event where Sweden illegally kidnapped by far the most intelligent person I have ever known.

Until this day neither Gottfrid’s Swedish attorney or his mother’s Cambodian attorney has been able to contact Gottfrid.

We miss you, Gottfrid.

Additional editing, TorrentFreak.com

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

Napster relied on a single server to store the files every user shared, provided a central file search, and even initiated file transfers between users. Due to this single point of failure, Napster collapsed once the server was shut down by RIAA.

Fortunately, the next generation of less centralized filesharing networks was already on the horizon. On the one hand there were completely decentralized networks like Gnutella. They used query flooding to find other clients, i.e. they just sent their requests from client to client until either enough results were found or the search timed out.

Yet this advantage of a completely server-independent network topology came with the disadvantage of the network not being scalable. Simply put, you can’t search the whole network efficiently.

On the other hand there was eDonkey2000 with its server-based network (first release on September 6th, 2000). Unlike with Napster, everyone could run a server. While the existence of multiple servers meant that the network couldn’t be shut down by closing a single central point, it also had the disadvantage that users could now only search for and share files with users on the same server.

This system had similarities with BitTorrent, at a time where the tracker was the sole mechanism through which to find other peers. However, with BitTorrent (started in the year 2001) this dependence on the tracker was intended because it meant that the tracker can control who is allowed to join the swarm, how many peers each client gets, etc…

The eDonkey2000 Network had a different design goal – a fully decentralized and yet scalable network. In this spirit eDonkey2000 started a new project called ‘Flock’ in May 2002. After beta testing it was renamed ‘Overnet’ and finally merged with the original eDonkey2000 client in August 2004.

In 2002 a new and rapidly growing client entered the ed2k network, a term which refers only to the server-based part of the eDonkey2000 network. An open source client for the ed2k network – our birthday-client eMule – was founded on May 13th, 2002 – 10 years ago today.

In June 2004, ed2k had about 2 million users while eDonkey2000’s Overnet network only had about 800,000 users. So eMule was the leading client in the ed2k network and together with BitTorrent it dominated the following years of filesharing.

Both networks, BitTorrent and eMule, slowly headed towards a more decentralized structure. In order to make files from all servers available to every user, eMule added keyword search via UDP to query all servers and source exchange between clients via TCP to get all available sources for a specific file. BitTorrent adopted the latter in peer exchange.

Early 2004 eMule implemented Kademlia, a decentralized DHT-like key-value store capable of finding sources as well as performing keyword search, thus making ed2k servers completely obsolete. Once again, BitTorrent headed in the same direction, implementing DHT in 2005.

DHT marks a revolutionary step in filesharing. Not just because you can download a file with only its hash (and a few nodes to bootstrap the network), but now a decentralized scalable network becomes available. While decentralized networks like Gnutella were capable of finding information using query flooding in O(n), DHT finds information in O(log2(n)). So if the size of the network doubles, only 1 additional request is needed on average – regardless of the actual size of the network.

The following example illustrates this advantage: Say you have a network with 2 million users and you want to find information about a specific file which unfortunately doesn’t exist in the network (i.e. no user shares this file). Using query flooding every client in the network has to be asked before we can be sure that the file isn’t available. Usually the search just runs into a time-out before, assuming (but not knowing) that the file isn’t available.

Thanks to DHT you only have to ask about 21 nodes (log2(2 mio)) before being sure that the file isn’t available in the entire network. Even better, this was the mathematically worst case scenario. Usually the actual number of required requests is much lower because on your search path you’ll likely reach the node closest to your requested file after only 3-4 requests (empirical evidence on eMule’s current Kademlia).

The next feature we think torrents should adopt is a real DHT-based keyword search. Tribler already made a step in that direction. However, their torrents are being broadcasted to other known clients which results in a search with bad scalability.

We already know that after switching to magnet links only, The Pirate Bay has a total size of about 90 MB. Now think of those 90 MB being stored decentralized. A network with millions of nodes in which each node stores a few hundred Kilobytes means you have thousands of replicas of each torrent entry.

This ensures each entry can be found, even if many nodes leave the network simultaneously. Unfortunately, all previous decentralized search implementations had huge amounts of spam in their search results. This is where we can learn from the torrent community. Sites like The Pirate Bay provide trusted search results.

In a completely decentralized search without any spam they would simply continue to provide this functionality using public-key cryptography to sign torrents. A user relying on his favorite torrent site’s search results would simply add its public key to his torrent client, thus allowing the client to check the signature of each torrent search result and filtering all fakes.

In this completely decentralized future a torrent site such as The Pirate Bay would simply be a laptop with average computing power connecting itself to the internet once every few hours to sign new torrents with its private key. Think about how hard it is just to trace such a “torrent site”. Shutting it down is practically impossible.

We are currently working on a client which will offer the above mentioned torrent search. It is currently in a closed alpha testing phase and will soon enter public beta tests.

—

About the authors:

David Xanatos is one of the founding members of the Austrian Pirate Party; he lives in Vienna and works as a Physicist at the university by day, and develops file sharing applications by night. He is mostly known for his NeoMule Mod.

Ekliptor is a computer scientist from Munich. He has developed many eMule Mods in the past and is currently researching weaknesses in eMule’s Kademlia and countermeasures at university. Their current project is called “NeoLoader” and able to download files from BitTorrent, eMule and one-click hosters.

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

Sharing Is Caring

Yesterday a young lad asked me, “Dan Bull in the charts? Is this a ‘fuck off’ to the record industry then?”

Good question, I thought. What do I really want to say to the entertainment industry?

When I released my first album “Safe” in 2009, I sent it to record companies and radio stations but they ignored it. When I telephoned Q magazine with a story, they told me they couldn’t write about it because they only feature artists with record deals.

In frustration at the glass ceiling that independent artists face, I started to publish protest songs on YouTube. To my surprise, they got much more coverage. I was excited, but thought “What if the labels see my tracks? They’ll never sign me now!”.

At that point, I realised something; if they didn’t want me, then the feeling was mutual. I didn’t need a record label telling me what to do, how to do it, and then keeping 80% of the takings for the privilege. I had the internet and I had my brain.

By embracing the free flow of information the internet allows, through filesharing and social media, I’ve found a worldwide fanbase without leaving the house. I’ve collaborated with artists across the globe without ever meeting them, and I can chat to my supporters whilst lying in bed eating pizza.

None of that would have been possible without file-sharing. If I followed the copyright law that lobbyists like the RIAA and the BPI insist is in the interest of artists like me, I would have no musical career. If pro-filesharing sites like TorrentFreak and The Pirate Bay didn’t share my work with you, you wouldn’t be reading this. I owe a debt of gratitude to every person that has ripped, burned, copied and shared anything I’ve done.

Sites such as The Pirate Bay do more to help unsigned artists than industry lobbyists ever have. Projects like The Promo Bay, which devotes The Pirate Bay’s home page, free of charge, to any musician who applies, creates overnight success stories.

The Pirate Bay stands defiantly in the face of corporate bullies who tout such nonsensical non-sequiters as “if you copy files, artists don’t get money, and if artists don’t get any money, they will stop making art.” This is an insult to the millions of dedicated amateur artists around the world.

What’s funny is that I’d have more respect for major labels if they just admitted what we already know – their bottom line is nothing but profit. There’s nothing wrong with that; there’s no need to hide it. But there is a need to play fair.

Entertainment lobbyists want to have their cake and eat it – they accumulated massive wealth through exploiting a free market when the means to distribute recorded art was scarce. This scarcity no longer exists – the market has moved on; and now they’re fighting to enforce artificial measures which will recreate those fleeting economic and technological conditions which allowed them to flourish.

Art has always been about sharing, adapting, and re-interpreting what you experience. Our children deserve to grow up in a world where they can enjoy this freedom without the fear that a pack of corporate lawyers will circle in and extradite them overseas.

People born in the late 80s have now lived more of their lives in the 21st century than the 20th century. A new generation has arrived for whom sharing information online is as easy and reflexive as breathing.

This generation isn’t going away; it’s growing larger all the time and to them, defunct business models developed by greying monopolists are utterly irrelevant. But these kids aren’t freeloaders or criminal masterminds, they are normal, decent people. When they hear a song or see a video that they like, they’ll post it to Facebook; they’ll Tweet it. They might remix it, or poke fun at it. This very behaviour which big entertainment claims to be the death knell of creativity, is the same behaviour that I believe will make my single a success.

“Sharing Is Caring” is a satire on this age of instant communication. It’s about what happens when things go wrong, and whether we are using the power of online communication to its full potential. Hidden somewhere in the track you can hear me urinating on a printout of the Digital Economy Act.

There are three main versions of the song – each about a different social network (Facebook, Twitter and Google+). There’s also a dubstep remix by Benny Aves and a reggae-tinged reworking by Animal Circus. I’ve also provided instrumentals and acapellas for you to remix and re-imagine at will.

I invite you to download “Sharing Is Caring” for free. If you like it, and want to support the campaign, you can choose to buy it. Each version you buy will count as a sale towards the charts. There are ten versions in all, meaning a single person can create ten sales towards the charts.

The singles charts are worthless as an indicator of quality, and artists needn’t strive for the validation of reaching them. However, by taking a free song by an unsigned artist to the echelons normally reserved for the industry elite, I want to smash the glass ceiling and show that there is another way of doing things. We don’t need the protection of ACTA, CISPA or any other acronym. As long as our internet is free, creativity will thrive.

And so, to answer the original question – I’m not shouting “fuck off” to the entertainment industry.

I’m saying “excuse me, but I think you’re in my seat”.

Links to the torrent or paid version of “Sharing Is Caring” are available here.

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

Two decades ago 3.5″ disks were the most sought after medium to distribute files. At the time, their massive 1.4 MB file size was more than enough to distribute files. But things got really interesting when people started to swap files on the Internet.

In just 2 score years, filesharing has evolved into an amazingly efficient process which has enhanced lives everywhere. It has brought great exposure to underexposed types of media and democratized distribution, making it possible for individuals to share files with the rest of the world at virtually no cost.

Let’s briefly examine how filesharing has become what it is today in a non-exhaustive overview.

BBS: The Early Days (70s-90s)

The BBS, or Bulletin Board System, has been largely attributed with the beginning of contemporary digital filesharing. Beginning with the Hayes Smartmodem, Bulletin Board Systems became automatic enough that Sysops (or administrators) were able to own and operate these mediums from their own homes as both a hobby and, later, as a business. Typically, the BBS was almost like an intranet in which users would dial-in with their modems to read/send messages, access news, and most importantly for us, share files.

Shareware became incredibly popular through the distribution provided by Bulletin Board Systems. From Wolfenstein to Commander Keen, users were able to learn about a BBS by word of mouth and, in its pinnacle, through printed magazines focusing on BBS’s. Many well-known software packages, including PKZIP, were made popular through the BBS. Many users today still use PKZIP’s .zip algorithm when compressing and decompressing archives.

There are still many traditional Bulletin Board Systems in operation today.

Usenet: Beginnings of Decentralization (Late 70s-Present)

Usenet or Newsgroups were similar to Bulletin Board Systems. However, they operated using UUCP and were able to transcend beyond the centralization of a BBS. Essentially, Usenet servers were able to receive files and re-distribute them amongst other Usenet servers effectively creating multiple copies of messages and files across hundreds upon thousands of servers. Usenet was the medium for discussions which gave birth to several projects, including the World Wide Web, Linux, and Mosaic, amongst other amazing projects.

While Usenet has been in existence since the late 70s, major filesharing did not typically occur until much later. In 1993, Eugene Roshal created RAR which allowed users to split files into multipart archives. Given the decentralized copy-nature of Usenet, this helped distribute files much faster and more efficiently, as corruption in file transfers no longer required files to be re-uploaded in their entirety.

Although many may disagree, Usenet is still very much in use today. However, it is used mostly for filesharing rather than for its original purpose of messaging, which has been mostly replaced by contemporary web forums and IRC.

FTP and FXP: Topsites and the ISO Scene (90s-Present)

Soon after, the underground filesharing scene gave birth to an intricate private network of FTP sites known as Topsites. These networks were based on invite only systems and adopted many of the features of Usenet.

Generally, release groups would upload new media to their release servers and create various kinds of announcements thereof (generally, IRC bot based). Then, couriers who had access to the release servers, as well as other servers, would transport or “race” new releases from one server to another, typically with the use of FXP. By doing so, they would earn credits (typically 1:3 ratio) for uploading files as long as the file was considered to be appropriate and unique (not a dupe — hence the racing).

Through this culture and rewards system, files eventually would make their way to topsites all over the world in this decentralized nature. Much like Usenet, split-file or RAR archives were utilized in order to further enhance the racing culture.

Of course, due to the private and closed nature of this distribution network, it was difficult for many users to gain access to these topsites. Topsites are very much still in existence today.

IRC (90s-Present)

IRC has been around for a long time and has played quite a role in society, both in filesharing as well as politics. Many IRC clients feature a DCC (direct client to client) protocol which allows users to do exactly as the name implies.

Through DCC, and later with advancements and bots known as XDCC servers, filesharing took yet another turn. Distribution groups who were able to get their hands on releases were able to serve files to the masses using these XDCC servers, which were typically hosted anywhere from powerful machines, brute forced Windows NT computers, personal computers, and university computer labs.

XDCC is still quite popular and a quick search through Netsplit.de shows many active channels across many active IRC networks still utilizing XDCC for distribution. Additionally, IRC is still widely used for its original purpose of chat as well as a bootstrap mechanism for filesharing mediums which sprouted later.

Hotline (90s)

For a brief period Hotline was a very popular medium for sharing files. At first, Hotline was very mainstream with many mega corporations participating in the Hotline network. However, it quickly faded away due to many complications, including but not limited to the encrypting of source files on Hotline computers which essentially crippled the company.

Napster (Late 90s)

Napster arguably brought MP3 and filesharing to the masses. There are very few netizens who haven’t used or heard of Napster. The software operated as a peer to peer filesharing network strictly used for music. Napster’s database, however, was centrally located, which eventually helped lead to its shutdown and subsequent demise. However, not before it helped to spread the idea of filesharing, in its entirety, to the masses.

Gnutella, eDonkey2000 and Kazaa (Early 2000)

The centralized nature of Napster gave way to a single point of failure – or single point of shutdown. As such, many gifted developers researched methods to avoid such complications. Gnutella, eDonkey2000, and Kazaa were different implementations which all did quite well in their heyday. While their protocols were all different, they were each very similar in that there was no central server. However, each protocol ended up “failing” as they were rooted in commercial (and corporate) interest – which ended up becoming an attack point.

Gnutella, originally created by the Nullsoft people, was once the most used network thanks to LimeWire. The LimeWire client was sued by the RIAA and shutdown in 2010, which turned Gnutella into a ghost network. The original eDonkey2000 from Jed McCaleb was toppled as well, but clones have kept the eDonkey network alive. The Kazaa team later created Skype, which is a widely used VoIP/IM platform.

DC++ and i2hub

DC++ and i2hub were popular methods of sharing files in closed-networks. Both were highly used within the university and college scene where students would share hub/server addresses with each other in order to share files at very high speeds within the local college networks. The advantages provided within these was that outside agencies and other various third parties could not access the content found within these networks.

However, the RIAA found a way into i2hub and was able to shut it down. DC++ is still in active development today, but is not as common or widespread as it once was.

BitTorrent (2001)

Bram Cohen created BitTorrent, which almost anyone with an Internet connection today has used, knowingly or not. BitTorrent essentially took on all of the greatest properties of its predecessors and packed them all into one, easy to use file sharing platform.

Taking on the concepts of breaking files into multiple chunks (Usenet, Topsites) as well as the decentralized peer-to-peer distribution mechanism (Napster, Gnutella, eDonkey2000, Kazaa), BitTorrent has catapulted into a mainstream filesharing mechanism which is fast, efficient, and difficult to stop.

Early versions of BitTorrent required centralized trackers to operate, but have later become able to utilize trackerless “torrents.”

Increasingly BitTorrent users have grown concerned with their privacy. Indexes such as YouHaveDownloaded.com have been able to maintain logs of every file downloaded by IP, which has raised significant awareness to whether it is safe to download files through BitTorrent. In addition, many ISPs have been known to cap speeds when detecting BitTorrent downloads.

As a result of these privacy concerns millions of BitTorrent users have signed up with Anonymous VPN services to mask their IP-addresses when downloading files

Filelockers and Forums (2000 to Present)

In recent years Megaupload, Rapidshare, Hotfile and other file lockers became quite popular. These file lockers provided the simplest means of filesharing when compared to all of their predecessors. Files are simply uploaded to the file locker, and a URL is provided to the file which is download through HTTP/HTTPS.

Generally, the URLs are shared through forums. Due to the affiliate compensations some cyberlockers offer to file uploaders on a per-file based download count, many files are distributed in split-file or RAR archives much like in the days of topsites and Usenet. This is mainly due to for-profit reasons as opposed to cultural or technical reasons as seen in the scene (topsites) or on Usenet respectively.

However, governments as well as special interest groups including the RIAA and MPAA have targeted file lockers leading to widely publicized lawsuits, including the arrest and destruction of Megaupload and Kim Dotcom.

Final Thoughts

Filesharing has come a long way, and with it, many industries have been born.

While it provides challenges to many of the big media conglomerates, it undoubtedly enriched the lives of many independent creators. Distribution is no longer something for the happy few, which shows as tens of thousands of artists share their work for free online every year.

Filesharing as a technology is good. Let’s make sure it stays around so that we may continue to share our thoughts, ideas, and art in order to better ourselves, our communities, and our earth. Anyone who is against that must obviously dream of world destruction, or at the least, wish for human progress to stop.

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

One question raised by the professor, which may not have been entertained by many prior to the wide public opposition to SOPA, is of whether the lobbyist companies currently reaping the benefits of increasingly harsher copyright enforcement confer a strong moral cause for government interference of free market innovation. When a Harvard Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies raises these concerns, perhaps it is time we stop and consider this.

I have to say that, given the limited time he had to work with, I am very impressed with Prof. Benkler’s ability to address many important issues surrounding the MegaUpload case in such a succinct manner. Lack of due process. The legal targeting of an entire industry and the effect that has on the free market. While these topics are deserving of in depth scrutiny on their own, it was the moral issue raised at the end that caught my attention.

Now, I don’t generally like to argue morals because they tend to get a bit sticky with each party holding fast to whichever beliefs they identified themselves as before any debate even begins. How do you decide whose morals are right and whose are wrong?

Do you go by the majority rule? As Benkler stated:

“The moral authority of the networked public is on a different plane than the moral authority of lobbyist companies and that’s an enormous power to be reckoned with.”

This is clearly reflected by the 71% of recently polled Americans who feel that censorship is a far worse threat to society than piracy. The millions of people who contacted their government officials in protest of SOPA censorship was so overwhelming, I nearly took for granted that it needs mention.

Something else struck me about this moral when he gave his closing statement.

“It’s critically important that this new political force be focused on what will build a network that supports the industry in its legitimate needs, not in it’s overstated fears of piracy, for which there is no real data.”

This is something that had occurred to me only recently. If all practical reasons or perceived “bogey man” type threats surrounding the word “piracy” are discounted, then there is not much left to look at other than the moral cause for such extreme legal action. Is there even a moral basis to be found here? Is there a moral excuse for an open legal attack on a rather young industry which had found a popular niche in the marketplace?

Unfortunately, this is not something I can argue for because no matter how hard I try to play devil’s advocate for the legal authorities involved, I can not see a moral motive behind their willingness to take such extreme action on behalf of copyright lobbyists. It is really difficult for one to see anything beyond greed or ignorance as the underlying motive here. Please, I challenge you to raise some moral support for the general attack on innovation by these lobbyists. Just give me one moral argument that has not already been completely refuted. Those of us who have paid close attention to these issues just can’t spend any more time explaining why file-sharing does not equal theft.

There is no strong practical or moral argument to justify the tremendous money and resources that go into preventing innovative companies from settling their own business conflicts with the established industry in a civil (not criminal) court of law. That said, Prof. Benkler is right. It is time to focus on what is best for society as a whole. Granted, that includes even the lobbyists who insist that we drag them kicking and screaming toward progress.

It’s not that we hate you, lobbyists. It’s just that, you know, things have been kind of rough for the rest of us lately and we could really use new industries, jobs and the many benefits that the internet actually offers us in spite of you. It is a great time to take a look at the solutions and benefits that lie in wait for us all. This type of progress is inevitable and the rest of the world has a moral duty to see it meet our common needs instead of waiting around for the industry to keep up.

This is a guest post from Ryan Smith, aka Green Pirate.

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

Thousands of sites, led by Reddit and Wikipedia, staged a successful blackout against SOPA and PIPA last week. But, it would be a mistake to think that the threat against the Internet existed only in the United States.

The same forces that were at work trying to push these web censorship bills through the US Congress are at work around the world.

In recent years the United States government and lobbying groups have put pressure on Sweden, Spain and many other countries to toughen their anti-piracy laws, but these are just a few examples.

An opinion piece I published on ERR, the Estonian Public Broadcaster, exposes the content industry’s lobbying activities there. The lobbying is led by the (non governmental) American Chamber of Commerce in Estonia (AmCham in short).

The piece debunks several false claims that are often made by the content industry and have been repeated by AmCham in Estonia.

For instance the claim that stronger anti-piracy laws would lead to more jobs and higher tax revenues in Estonia. While such laws, if they worked at all, would at best only shift jobs and revenue from one sector to another, the reality is that such a shift would create jobs in Hollywood at the expense of jobs in Estonia, thus causing a net loss to the Estonian economy.

The threat that stronger anti-piracy laws would pose to the open internet in Estonia, such as the ubiquitous free WiFi, is also covered.

It is not everyday that an article critical of the legacy content industry appears in the mainstream media. This is a unique chance for “our side” of the argument to be heard by a wider audience. The IP-maximalists know this, so it is no surprise that they are out in force in the comment section trying to drown out the dissent by repeating the same old pro-IP fallacies.

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

—

I have been practicing in the area of copyright infringement and specializing in bittorrent cases essentially since they started in the District of Columbia.  I wanted to write this short anecdote to raise awareness to an important issue regarding the Voltage Pictures case (and possibly other cases as well).

I frequently have prospective clients who contact me because their Internet account information is being subpoenaed by Voltage Pictures.  Before I do a consultation, I always verify that the IP address listed on the letter is indeed part of the lawsuit – i.e. that it’s listed in the complaint or a similar document.  However, recently I’ve been contacted by one or more people whose alleged IP addresses aren’t listed in the court records. As I’ll explain below, this appears to be not only an ethical violation but a legal issue giving rise to one or more claim under state or federal law. To better understand it’s useful to know the procedural background for the case.

The initial Voltage Pictures complaint didn’t include a list any “John Doe” IP addresses even though the case was styled: “v. Does 1-5,000.” Usually a plaintiff will attach to a complaint a list of IP addresses in these types of lawsuits so there is at least a “putative” defendant that is being sued as a John Doe. The fact that the plaintiff didn’t do this is arguably improper, but I won’t go into detail on this point.

Needless to say, the first time that the plaintiff mentions any specific IP address is on Exhibit C to the plaintiff’s June 7, 2010 motion that seeks permission to subpoena various ISPs. The motion asks permission to subpoena Internet account information for over 600 IP addresses attached as Exhibit C as well as “any other infringers that plaintiff identifies during the course of this litigation, as Plaintiff’s infringement monitoring efforts are on-going and continuous”. The motion concludes by asking the Court to issue an order permitting discovery in substantially the same form as the “proposed order” attached to the motion. The only problem, however, is that the plaintiff failed to attach a proposed order.

For reason unexplained (perhaps a simply mistake – judges are human too), the Court nonetheless granted the plaintiff’s motion on June 25, 2010. In doing so, it didn’t specify whether it was giving the plaintiff permission to conduct discovery regarding any IP addresses detected in the future (apart and in addition to those listed on Exhibit C). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the plaintiff either didn’t notice or – or noticed and didn’t seek clarification from the Court, and continued to subpoena the information for thousands of IP addresses in addition to those listed on Exhibit C.

For reasons unexplained yet again, it was not until April 4, 2011, approximately ten month later, that the Court clarified its previous order by stating the following:

. . .the plaintiff construes the June 25, 2010 . . . Order . . . as not restricted to the 687  specific IP addresses listed in Exhibit C to the motion. Rather, plaintiff construes this order as granting plaintiff leave to “conduct discovery on all of the Doe Defendants . . . that Plaintiff Voltage identifies during the course of this litigation . . .  The basis for this  broad interpretation of the June 25, 2010 Expedited Discovery Order apparently stems from a  footnote that the plaintiff included in its original motion. . . . The broad subpoena authority sought by the plaintiff in a footnote in its motion filing, however, was not specifically addressed, let alone expressly sanctioned, in the June 25, 2010 Minute Order approving expedited discovery. In short, the plaintiff’s broad interpretation of the June 25, 2010 Expedited Discovery Order is incorrect.  The plaintiff has only been granted leave to seek identifying information for those IP addresses that have been specifically proffered as relevant to this action by being listed on Exhibit C of plaintiff’s mot ion for expedited discovery. ECF No. 4.

In response to this new order, the plaintiff filed an amended complaint on May 31, 2011 listing over 24,500 IP addresses and on July 19, 2011 asked the Court for permission to conduct discovery regarding them. On July 25, 2011, the Court clarified that a previous order entered on March 31, 2011 had already given it permission to subpoena ISPs for the contact information regarding any IP address listed in an amended complaint (the Court mistakenly says March but the order was actually entered on May 31). Following this clarification, the plaintiff continued to subpoena the account information for thousands of Internet subscribers.

I wanted to write this short analysis because recently I’ve been contacted by one or more people whose alleged IP address isn’t listed in Exhibit C to the plaintiff’s motion seeking to conduct discovery nor the amended complaint. This is a serious issue because the Court’s July 25, 2011 order should have clarified that the plaintiff is only permitted to conduct discovery with respect to the IP addresses listed in the lawsuit as John Does. If this has happened to you, please speak with an attorney in your jurisdiction because may have a claim for “abuse of process” (versus the plaintiff or DGW) or a claim under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 47 U.S.C. § 551 or other federal or state laws (versus the plaintiff, DGWor your ISP).

Unfortunately, if you’ve already settled you likely don’t have a claim because Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver (the plaintiff’s counsel) usually insists on completely one-sided settlement agreements (another good reason to hire an attorney to negotiate for you). If you’ve already settled and feel gipped, you might consider filing a bar complaint with the District of Columbia to make sure that this doesn’t happen to others. I recommend speaking with an attorney beforehand, however, to ensure that you aren’t breaching any confidentiality provision.

With everyone’s help, we may not be able to kill these ugly troll lawsuits altogether but at least we can level the playing field a little.

Yours truly,

Blair Chintella
www.chintellalaw.com

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

When it comes to copyright theft and piracy, many people assume there’s just one side – the side of truth, justice and copyright owners. Beyond that there are parasitical thieves. When most governments come to legislate on the matter, their response is usually one of listening to what big corporations and lobby groups say and nodding in agreement. For the general public, years of being bombarded by cross platform marketing campaigns have ingrained people with various “Piracy bad. Copyright good” slogans.

We’ve been deluged with the arguments against piracy for years. But what’s the other side of the story? Could it possibly be that copyright infringers and pirates aren’t always the bad guys? Are copyright owners their own worst enemy? Judge for yourself and tell us what you think.

Contempt for customers

We’ll start with an area that many reading this can relate to. Commercial media’s contempt for its audience. These are some examples which touched me and they may ring bells for you.

Gladiator, Channel 10. We’re back from a commercial break. Rusty arrives back at home in Spain to find his wife and son raped and crucified. It’s arguably the most touching scene of the whole movie. What better time for a giant cartoon helicopter to fly around the screen announcing, “Don’t forget, Merrick and Rosso! The B-Team! Every Wednesday night at 7.30!”

I remember every syllable of that ad. Positioning ads like this is, Gruen has told us, is most effective as we’re at our most vulnerable. But at the same time this was like the network raising its middle finger at the us and yelling, “Lap it up, suckers!” But is there a way to treat your audience with any more contempt?

I think Channel 7 managed it. Remember the TV show Lost? The first series had a huge buzz about it – largely from making huge waves in America, weeks beforehand. Many people downloaded the series from the US as it aired. I stuck with Channel 7 for some kind of local solidarity reasons. The anticipation coming up to the final, 24th episode revolved around the big reveal, “What’s under the hatch?” Then, after watching religiously week after week, there was an unexplained six week hiatus. Six weeks! Again, I restrained myself from downloading the final episodes and stuck with 7. Finally, the show reappeared. Then, in the very first ad slot of the very first ad break there came the trailer, “Don’t forget to keep watching the final episodes of Lost [as if!] when we show you what’s under the hatch!”

Then they showed us what was under the hatch. Right there and then.

I won’t tell you what I shrieked at the TV. But perhaps you can imagine. As spoilers go, that was huge. That was the last episode of Lost I watched… On Channel 7.

This happens all the time. Channel 11, the other day, came back from a five minute ad break to show the last ten seconds of a Simpsons episode. Ten seconds! But I think the ‘abject contempt to its viewers award’ must go to Channel 9.

I could regale you for ages with my Channel 9 rage. Yet I keep finding myself watching movies which are butchered by having five-minutes-on-five-minutes-off ads at the end. Using Tivo to buffer programs for an hour before watching – so that I can skip through the ads – is one way round it. Of course, this forces 9 to use in-program display ads to make up the revenue. Somehow I don’t care. Because there are two areas where 9′s actions are the scheduling equivalent of dropping a turd on my doorstep.

Sporting events

I remember my dad ringing up from the UK and remarking how excellent and exciting the Melbourne Commonwealth Games were. Discussion in the office had confirmed that I wasn’t the only person who found 9′s delayed and appalling coverage unwatchable. It’s been the same for subsequent Commonwealth Games and the Olympics. If you could watch events Live on the internet, wouldn’t you? There’s no other legal way to watch most of them Live (if at all) in Australia.

Did you want to watch all of the matches in the Rugby World Cup? Must have sucked how 9 bought the rights and then DIDN’T SHOW THE MATCHES LIVE! For those who knew what they were doing, you could watch them free on the internet. What other option did they have?

The English Premiership

Nine’s treatment of sport is a local problem. Globally, the big issue is English Soccer. The rights are managed by Sky TV (The UK’s equivalent to Foxtel). To be fair, the money Sky pumped into the sport, plus the huge improvements in coverage, is one of the reasons this is the most popular league in world sport. But for those of us who had little money, we’d rather be in a position to actually watch a game on TV than know that only the moneyed people had access to the improved coverage. There was the option of traipsing down the pub, but that meant coming home most-likely drunk, reeking of cigarette smoke (before the ban) and still having spent money. But the real problem was this…

You’d ring up Sky. “Hi, I’d like to subscribe to Sky to watch the football please?”

“Certainly, which football do you want?”

“The Premiership football.”

Certainly, it’s available on this package, that package and the other package.”

“No I just want the football. I don’t want the US Soap channel, the African Animal Channel, the Infomercial Channel… etc etc etc.”

Indeed, Sky spreads its Premiership games across several channels in several packages so you have to subscribe to all their other crap in order to get the few football matches that you want to pay for. The resulting monthly fee is well over a hundred dollars. Even to watch the odd pay per view game you have to pay for Sky and then pay for a package in order to pay for the pay per view.

Or… you can just watch it live on the internet. For free.

In Australia, it’s a similar problem. But I’m not subscribing to Foxtel just to watch my team play the occasional game in the middle of the night. I’d gladly pay to watch the matches I want to see. But I can’t. As a result, I hardly watch any matches anymore. But if there’s a big one, then my one and only option is to watch it live on the internet. What else can I do?

The problem is such that there are large international communities all over the world, telling people where to watch games live on the web. Some websites even charge a fee to provide a high-quality online stream. The charges cover hosting costs and, once there are enough people connected, they accept no more customers for fear of dropping quality. So people are actually PAYING to watch these matches illegally when they could watch them illegally for free!

Overseas Content

This problem reappears in many other areas too. A major one concerns Japanese anime (cartoons). Ars Technica did anexcellent investigation into this matter. It found that there were huge online communities sharing copyrighted content, but that money was not a reason for doing so. Typically, when a cartoon appeared in Japan, it would take a year for it to appear overseas. When it did appear it would be dubbed with dumb-ass American dialogue which obliterated many of the cultural references which made the cartoons popular in the first place.

One of the ‘infringing’ community websites then did what one would hope the rest of the media industry would do - it realised that there was an enormous demand for overseas content to be aired online immediately after publication and that people would happily pay for it.

The BBC

Recently, the BBC launched iPlayer in Australia. This gives you access to much of the BBC’s vast television archives. To a degree, this has long been desired by overseas residents. But the dominating discussion was all about the BBC’s failure to allow payment of an overseas licence fee to let international viewers watch Live BBC content.

I lived in Japan several years ago, and people from all nationalities said at the time they’d love to pay to watch live BBC TV. The demand is enormous but when I recently asked the BBC, they said it wasn’t going to happen.

Sure they get huge sums for licensing internally-produced programs and series, but they may get even more by allowing online access to international paying customers. However, even if this did happen, there would be issues with the BBC covering international events. A good example is Formula 1. Many Australian F1 fans baulk at Channel Ten’s coverage and are only too glad for the switchover to the BBC’s outstanding race commentary. Not having to suffer ads or Mark-Webber-obsessed presenters who struggle to contain their disappointment at not talking about V8s or motorbikes is a constant bugbear for many. Those who know about the internet know how to stream the BBC’s coverage Live so there are no ads or interruptions. You can’t pay for that though. Many would if they could.

But if there’s one prime example of the problems of surrounding the BBC, copyright infringement and international viewers it’s a certain program with 350 million viewers worldwide…

Top Gear

I used to watch Top Gear. I can’t now. There are several hundred thousand Australians who are in the same boat. SBS picked it up long ago and built a regular audience of over a million people. Then 9 bought the rights and quickly decimated the audience. It’s around 400,000 now. How on earth did it manage to do that in car-crazy Australia?

First you need to know that the BBC sends out an international version of Top Gear to overseas licensees which has 15 minutes cut from each show – to allow for ads. Consequently, if you want to watch a full episode of Top Gear your only option is to download it illegally from the web, or wait ages for the DVDs to appear. Then there was the fact that SBS had a two-YEAR delay in showing episodes. Nonetheless, a million loyal fans watched it and I was one of them.

After switching network, Channel 9 bragged about fast-tracking UK episodes. All sounded good. But then it took the already-short international version and butchered it by cutting more content out to add even more ads. The following week, despite promises of a new episode it showed an ancient, years-old episode. Apparently, it was OK to say this was a new episode because it was new to Channel 9. Cue ten years’ worth of old episodes appearing randomly interspersed with more–recent episodes and Blam! the audience walked. I’d happily pay to watch Top Gear. Channel 9 makes it unwatchable. My only option is to download it. I haven’t watched it in years.

The Music Industry

Piracy has affected few industries more than music. Back in the early days of the internet, services like Napster, Kazaa and Audio Galaxy appeared which let you swap songs with other people online. At the time, there was no talk of copyright infringement, it was just something that geeky internet users did and it felt like a more-efficient way of swapping cassettes and CDs in the playground. Unfortunately, it was so efficient that the global and industrialised scale destroyed the traditional way in which music was produced and marketed. Quite rightly, the services were shut down. But the story doesn’t end there.

The age of compressed music formats and MP3 music players had begun. Once the third-generation iPod hit the market, along with iTunes, compressed digital music became mainstream. What a great opportunity for the music industry: the customers wanted compressed music delivered online and it was cheap to do. But could the industry have screwed things up any more?

Rather than give customers what they wanted publishers threw every toy they had out of the pram and hit the litigation button. One example saw the recording industry sue a 12-year old girl and won $2000. From her point of view she was simply using a free service on the internet that all her friends were using and discussing. One wonders how happy the recording industry was with its $2000 payout. Over the years industry bodies have spent far more money suing people than they recouped through the courts.

One of the main reasons we all have anti-piracy slogans embedded in our brains is because the music industry chose to try and protect its existing market and revenue streams at all costs and marginalise and vilify those who didn’t want to conform to the harsh new rules being set.

The Napster brand went legit, iTunes rose and Sony started offering its vast music catalogues online. But instead of selling the compressed music that the public wanted, the industry “sold” music riddled with Digital Rights Management (DRM) ‘copyright protection’ meaning that the music would only play back on certain devices under certain conditions. Music was also being sold using formats which wouldn’t work on all music players and compressed to degrees that resulted in a loss of quality which turned-off enthusiasts. In short, despite selling the music, you didn’t own what you’d bought. You were essentially “renting” the rights to the music. Shouldn’t there have been intervention from the government?

After a while Sony got bored of the lack of traction which its appalling model had generated and turned off its entire system. This meant that everyone who had “bought” music from Sony couldn’t play it on anything other than the old devices launched to go with it. People who had invested heavily in Sony’s music were ignored.

Around this time Sony also came up with other ways to stop people listening to the music they had bought. A system appeared which inserted noise and interference when people tried to compress music from CDs. Consequently, if you only listened to MP3 music, you couldn’t actually legally get an MP3 version of a song. Even if you had paid money for a CD. Sony even topped this by secretly putting computer software on its audio CDs which secretly installed licensing software on your computer if you tried to compress the music on it. Not only was this a gross breach of privacy, but the ‘rootkit’ that was installed was a major security threat. This was one occasion where Sony got hammered for its actions. Ultimately, though the publishers were treating their paying customers as potential criminals and the widespread resentment was palpable.

As time wore on, it became clear that the DRM on music was linked to the original hardware you had when it was bought. For many people, if you bought legitimate compressed music online, like I did, when you go to play it you get the following message…

I paid good money for those songs. Am I supposed to buy them again? Or can I download them illegally from the internet in clear conscience?

Things seem to be slowly changing with Apple offering DRM-free, higher-quality songs on iTunes now and with the industry recognising the importance of the online music store. Nonetheless, you’re still forced to buy from one seller, using one format and at a quality which, these days, could be higher. The best sales model surely came from legally-spurious site, AllOfMp3.

This Russian based site allowed you to purchase almost any song in any format using any level of compression that you wanted and charged a low price for it. In other words, it recognised public demand and gave people exactly what they wanted.

But its licensing model was dodgy at best. It did pay royalties but at tiny Russian radio-play levels. Many of the songs were sold without permission from the copyright holders. It got sued by everyone for a staggering $1.65 trillion, but waseventually acquitted.

Outlandish lawsuits like this have become the norm for media publishers and their industry organisations. At no point did they realise that this was the most obvious business model to use – to give people what they want at a fair price.

Nowadays, the publishers seem to have moved on. They’re still suing downloaders and crippling innovative internet-radio business models like Pandora, but the new popular model seems to be charging a subscription fee for on-demand access to entire music catalogues – iTunes’ iCloud music service, Last.fm and Sony’s Anubis are good examples. I’ve used the latter for months and it’s excellent.

Movies

Heaps of movies are illegally downloaded these days, but unlike the music industry, the film industry is thriving. Theories abound as to the impact of downloading movies over the internet: there is evidence which suggests that those who download movies tend to be enthusiasts who spend more on movies in the first place (as is the case with music downloaders). Certainly the cinema trade is booming. My pet theory is that many downloaders download movies they aren’t particularly fussed about seeing (not enough to pay for them anyway) or which are unavailable where they live. But the constant engagement with movies keeps them in the “film enthusiast” bracket and that makes them go to the cinema when something that they’re particularly keen on appears.

Hysterical lawyers say otherwise. More on that below. Either way, movie downloading is a contentious business as are its consequences.

There is obviously a huge public craving for movies and video on demand but the only place that you can get many movies is illegally online. Legal services in Australia tend to, well, suck. Tivo has boasted for years about the thousands of movies you can pay for on demand. Most of them seem to have Marilyn Monroe or John Wayne in them. Selections aren’t much better elsewhere. If you want to pay for good video on demand services the best you can do is pay for quasi-legal access to American sites like Netflix. Or download illegally. Either way, you’re probably a criminal.

A popular, photoshopped poster that has been doing the rounds.

Fair Dealing

In Australia, America and other countries, there are laws which protect people from innocently using “copyrighted” media in non-commercial and various reasonable ways. But don’t expect to find authorities standing up for your rights.

Youtube is a prime example. If you make a video of something, but in the background there’s a song playing – from a nearby radio or whatever – it gets banned. Want to share your child’s birthday party with friends and family? You’d better not play any recorded Happy Birthday song in the background – you’ll get your account suspended.

Other bans stem from people making their own movie mashups or discussing clips from mainstream media.

It’s difficult to imagine what lawyers and publishers have to gain by banning people from doing this and vilifying them for doing so. Youtube got sick of dealing with individual take-down requests and waved the white flag long ago. It just bans things automatically now.

Almost all of these infringements are actually allowable under Fair Use (America) and Fair Dealing (Australia) legislation. But to the publishers and establishment, it too-often seems, you’re just a criminal.

Harsh Litigation

Most troubling of all is that prosecuting people for suspected copyright infringement has become an industry in its own right. Legal firms are buying the rights from publishers to sue people on their behalf. It’s an evolution of the ambulance chasing lawyer. There’s a straight-forward business model for it.

You send out letters to potential copyright infringers telling them that they have downloaded something illegally and will be sued for anything up to $150,000. They have the option to settle beforehand – typically for a few thousand dollars – just enough to save on hiring a lawyer to defend the case.

The threat is based on the fact that if you have downloaded a movie then you will also have uploaded it and distributed it to thousands of people. In reality, however, if you download something using bittorrent only a small fraction gets uploaded. It would take balls of steel and deep pockets to explain that one in court though.

In America the music and movie lobbies have pushed through a non-government accord which allows corporations to punish suspected copyright infringers without any trial or due legal process. The US government, it transpires, has few issues with this. It’s not yet clear whether Australia will follow along similar lines.

Industry bodies are certainly wanting to enforce their will on Australian legislation, though, as the battle between iiNet and AFACT illustrates. AFACT has been defeated several times but hasn’t given up. More recently, The Age uncovered a new Gold Coast operation which is planning to demand money from downloaders of porn. There are fears that this could be the thin end of the wedge for Australia.

However, the article also points out that similar UK operations were eventually denounced in the House of Lords as “straightforward legal blackmail.” So not all governments are as compliant as the copyright industry might like.

Conclusion

Nowadays, copyright barely resembles what it was originally designed for i.e. to protect both parties: inventors and content creators on the one side and the public on the other. Corporate America and government compliance have written out public interests in many instances. The case of Mickey Mouse is illustrative.

Nonetheless, there’s an air of inevitability about it all. Historically, how often have incumbent, monopolistic industries shrugged their shoulders and written off their entire business model to embark on a journey along a crowded new highway, with rules set by customers, that leads who-knows-where?

On a personal note, I suspect that once the world’s internet infrastructure comes up to speed, we’ll all be using on-demand subscription models and the notion of buying content to keep will feel archaic. Even so, more needs to be done to protect the public from ham-fisted copyright industries demanding payment for everything.

A great deal of copyright infringement does not stem from criminal behaviour. Much of it occurs simply because there is all-too-often no other way to legally access the content you want – even if you do want to pay for it.

It’s worth remembering that there are many big losers because of piracy, but these have been well covered elsewhere. The video games industry, for example, is a major loser, but we’ll deal with that another time. This article is one of few that deals with the flipside of the argument and so please remember that it is intends to describe and inform – not endorse any infringement. Has it changed your opinion on the matter or confirmed it? Let us know below.

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