The Frostwire client, which can be used in the same way as uTorrent or Vuze for example, now includes a torrent creation feature which supports Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin and PayPal donations.

Once a torrent is created and loaded into FrostWire, downloaders are given a new set of icons indicating which crypto-currency donation options are programmed into the release.

Clicking any of these takes the downloader to a custom donation page, meaning that there is a direct connection between a torrent and a monetization option, something that has been absent from torrents since their creation well over a decade ago.

Although software and a music single were used as a demo for the tipping system, no band had taken the plunge and used it for one of their albums. A month later and hip hop band Ain’t No Love have made history, becoming the first ever band to offer a full album for free on BitTorrent, using an integrated Bitcoin tipping mechanism.

“Using Bitcoin has definitely widened our reach to people who don’t necessarily listen to our type of music, but like that we get down with Bitcoin, and started listening to our music, which is a cool thing in itself,” says lead singer Saidah Conrad.

Having worked hard on a Bitcoin implementation, FrostWire say they are pleased to welcome the band on board.

“Ain’t No Love’s Tears of Joy comes to FrostWire during a very special time – as a first ever .torrent album to support crypto-currency donations such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin (as well as the more traditional PayPal),” the company said.

“So if you love the band just as much as we do, be sure to check them out on Facebook, share the video, spread the news on Twitter or simply show some support by giving a little tip, whatever you can, any way you can.”

The other neat thing is that all donations go directly to the band as there is no middleman, and FrostWire is promising to keep it that way forever.

The torrent for Ain’t No Love’s Tears of Joy can be downloaded here.

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

The possibilities are intriguing, from artists being able to seed their own content to the public and getting paid directly by fans, to curators of already free content being rewarded for their distribution efforts.

In file-sharing circles there has been a traditional reliance upon PayPal transactions to show appreciation, but with the rise of alternative cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, new avenues have opened up. Many sites, The Pirate Bay included, accept donations in Bitcoin and Litecoin, and some artists have adopted the currencies for fans who want to chip-in.

Despite these developments there remains a disconnect between downloading content and a subsequent donation, meaning that split-second urges to hand over cash in appreciation often have time to cool. That, however, is about to change.

Following their teaser in December 2013, a brand new build of FrostWire’s BitTorrent client (Windows, Mac, Linux) now includes torrent creation supporting not only Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin and PayPal donations, but also the selection of appropriate Creative Commons licenses for delivered content.

We’ll bring you comment from the FrostWire team in just a moment, but first let’s look at the simple process from the creator’s perspective.

After loading up FrostWire one simply goes about creating a .torrent file in the usual way, by selecting the tracking options and pointing it to the relevant content on the host computer. If the torrent creator would then like to give fans the option to donate, two extra screens appear.

The first allows the user to select an appropriate Creative Commons license under which to spread the content.

The next screen configures payment/tips/donation options, whether Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, PayPal, or a mix-and-match between all four.

Obviously the creator/distributor will now need to seed, at least until plenty of other people download and start sharing the content.

For the downloader it’s simply a case of installing the correct version of FrostWire (this is a must at the moment until other clients implement the feature) and clicking on a donation-enabled .torrent file.

FrostWire have made a couple available for testing, one of which is a track by FriCtrl labeled Bitcoin_Revolution. Downloading that reveals a box next to the torrent title labeled “Tips/Donations”, with Bitcoin’s logo highlighted. Hovering over reveals the text shown below.

Once an option is clicked, FrostWire launches a payment process which opens a web page containing the target wallet’s cryptocurrency address in QR, hyperlink, and text form.

Of course, there will be those who immediately see possibilities for monetizing piracy. But, speaking with TorrentFreak, FrostWire’s Angel Leon says their objectives actually run counter to that.

“We believe piracy is best fought by giving consumers the options of getting legal content, and we want to build solutions that use this technology to empower content creators no matter how big or small they are. We want them to try BitTorrent as an alternative, an additional channel. We think it will be easier to convince more and more artists to join us with the new possibilities,” Leon told TF.

“Putting it bluntly, Bitcoin and BitTorrent integration give us the tools to create the P2P equivalents of iTunes and Netflix, which are centralized venues which work great for big content but not so much for the little guys who have to jump through many hoops to get in.” 

Leon says that the end result could be a decentralized media store “owned by nobody and available to all,” one which allows consumers to deal directly with content creators “without the corporate interests, censorship issues and draconian rules that make it hard for the little guy to publish his work.”

The possibilities don’t always have to be commercial either.

“Just imagine a BitTorrent bundle powered by this technology in which Bono from U2 shares free songs or a free video documentary to raise awareness and collect Bitcoin donations for the (Red) foundation to further the fight against HIV worldwide,” the FrostWire team teases.

Further information, including the experimental builds and info on how to activate .torrent-enabled donations, can be found here.

^{Photo: Steve Garfield}

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

The sites in question appear to offer downloads for software such as uTorrent, Vuze, LimeWire and FrostWire, but these free clients come with a twist.

In some cases people have to pay for the download ‘service’ while others simply install a malware-infested program on users’ computers.

Growing tired of these scammers, the company behind the FrostWire BitTorrent client decided to take action. To protect their brand and prospective users, earlier this year the company filed several domain name disputes with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

“The initial motivation goes back many years ago when the fraudsters started hurting lots of FrostWire users and our reputation,” FrostWire’s Angel Leon tells TorrentFreak.

“It wasn’t until this year that we learned about the WIPO mechanism from some friends and we decided to do it once we saw the fraudsters started appearing on the first page of search results on Google.”

And this effort has not been without success.

FrostWire has now gained control over the domain name frostwirereview.com after a WIPO panel concluded that it was registered in bad faith. The site in question profited from offering counterfeit FrostWire installers and passing off third-party software as FrostWire.

“It is clear that the website at the disputed domain name blatantly seeks to confuse Internet users into thinking that the website is the Complainant’s or at the least is authorized by the Complainant and that the Complainant’s FROSTWIRE software may be uploaded from this site,” the panel writes in its decision.

“The Panel finds that the Respondent is seeking to confuse consumers and is using the disputed domain name to attract consumers for commercial gain to its website by creating a likelihood of confusion with the Complainant’s FROSTWIRE name and mark,” they add.

Talking to TorrentFreak, FrostWire’s Angel Leon explained that they still have cases pending against several other domains, including frostwire10.com, downloadfrostwire.org and frostwirefree.net. Although the problem might not go away by seizing a domain name, the FrostWire team told us that it’s better than taking no action at all.

“We know they won’t go away 100% but it’s a great step in the right direction against this type of internet fraud,” Leon says.

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

Enter the multi-million dollar business of P2P-scammers.

For more than a decade all sorts of shady companies have been ripping off novice file-sharers by tricking them into downloading scam products. Their sites appear to offer downloads for software such as uTorrent, Vuze, LimeWire and FrostWire, but the free clients come with a twist.

In some cases people have to pay for the download ‘service’ while others simply install a malware-infested program on users’ computers. There are even scam outfits that do both.

Talking to TorrentFreak, FrostWire‘s Angel Leon explains that because of these scams they get loads of refund requests every day, hurting the company’s reputation. The scammers on the other hand make huge profits.

“The big harm done here is to our trademark,” Leon says.

“They blatantly use our logo and our name, they’ve also managed to game Google big time with a shitload of content farm websites to the point that they’re placed 2nd in Google’s search results, so they must be making a killer.”

The pictures on the right are just a few examples of the thousands of scam sites on the Internet. All of them rip-off novice consumers by letting them download rogue versions of FrostWire.

“The damages we feel are basically our users being victims of these people and threatening us for something we haven’t done,” Leon told us.

“Then there’s all the work we do to promote our brand as the way to use P2P for legal purposes gone to hell, because of the way the scammers encourage copyright infringement,” he adds.

Unfortunately, there is not much file-sharing companies can do about these scams. FrostWire actually went as far as hiring a company that’s specialized in sending takedown requests, but without results. And even if one scam domain is shut down, another will replace it the day after.

Scammers know how to route around censorship.

According to Leon, Google isn’t very helpful either. While the legit version of FrostWire is not allowed to advertise on Google’s Adwords, the scammers are slipping through by the dozens.

“It’s very interesting to notice that somehow they manage to go past the Google AdWords guidelines and they spend a lot of money on advertising everyday on the “frostwire” related keywords,” Leon told TorrentFreak.

“On the other hand, if we try to advertise FrostWire as a file sending application, we get a boot from Google saying that we are P2P software.”

FrostWire and other file-sharing companies hope that enough people ask for a refund from the credit card companies so the scammers have a hard time accepting money. Other than that there’s not much they can do. Or is there?

Reading the above shows that the problems FrostWire and others face are similar to those described in the pro-SOPA talking points of the entertainment industries.

There is one major difference though. Unlike Hollywood, file-sharing companies such as FrostWire fully realize that such a broad censorship law would do more harm than good. Also, P2P scammers actually cause millions of dollars in damages to the public.

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

Tens of thousands of musicians, from those just starting out to those already established, use BitTorrent to give away their music for free.

One of the BitTorrent clients that helps these artists to get noticed is FrostWire. In 2008, the client introduced its FrostClick service through which it promotes independent artists, and not without success.

With help from FrostWire, independent musicians reach a bigger audience than many of the artists signed by major labels. In the last year alone, 2.4 million people downloaded the albums promoted by FrostWire, and according to the artists who were featured, it pays off.

“FrostWire jumpstarted my music career by giving away my album for free to over 130,000 people,” says female rapper Kellee Maize in a comment. “Paying for that type of exposure would have cost me over $50,000 on other outlets such as taking out Facebook ads or Google Adsense.”

“Because of FrostWire I’ve accumulated over 100,000 Facebook and Twitter followers. During my FrostWire campaign, my website has received over 100,000 page views,” she adds.

Some of the critics of ‘free’ music say that it doesn’t convert to any sales at all, but Maize disagrees. The rapper says that thanks to releasing her music under a Creative Commons license through FrostWire, she’s now earning some decent money.

“I’ve been able to sell more albums on iTunes with this exposure and earn a sustainable income off of MP3 sales even though my music is part of Creative Commons,” says Maize.

She’s not alone either. Other artists that were promoted by FrostWire also praise the promotional success it gave them.

“We were truly delighted by the number of downloads we received after our EP was featured on FrostWire. It’s the most effective way we’ve found so far of getting the music out there,” says John from Azoora Feat. Graciellita.

This view is shared by Ryan Egan from The Ugly Club. “I never anticipated the kind of feedback we’ve received from music fans all over the world and it was a great decision to leave our record in the hands of the great people at FrostClick,” Egan says.

To celebrate 2.4 million downloads in 2011, FrostWire has released a compilation album as they also did in 2009. The A Side of the new album features 18 artists who’ve been promoted in the FrostWire client, and Side B is a hand-picked selection of 12 of the best artists who were featured on the FrostClick website.

All all the tracks are completely free to download and share. We’ve embedded Side A of FrostWire Creative Commons Mixtape below, and Side B is available here. For those who want more, here’s another 2.5 gigabyte compilation of some of the best Creative Commons music of 2011.

Enjoy.

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

FrostWire’s Angel Leon tells TorrentFreak that his company was not informed why FrostWire was suspended, but the first thought is that it has something to do with the recent settlement his company reached with the FTC.

Just before the weekend several news outlets reported that FrostWire and the FTC had settled their court case over privacy concerns. The government agency, which aims to protect the rights of consumers, alleged that FrostWire was disregarding users’ privacy by sharing files by default.

FrostWire agreed that this was a valid concern and based on pointers from the trade commission, updated its desktop and Android applications. These updates were actually carried out months ago, meaning that since then the application was no longer a concern for the FTC, hence the settlement.

“We fixed the app ages ago, and probably 99.9% of the userbase is actually running 0.6.3 (one generation over), so there shouldn’t be a hint of worry in regards to the FTC Complaints,” Leon said.

However, some reports in the media made it seem like FrostWire was still breaching users’ privacy, and this may have triggered Google’s decision to boot the app from the Android market.

Angel Leon notes that the worst part of it all is the lack of communication on Google’s part. Aside from a notice that the application had been suspended, the FrostWire team has received no information. It could be that the removal is totally unrelated to the FTC issue, but without a word from Google that’s impossible to confirm.

“It’s just plain wrong that you get suspended without ANY explanation or ANY notice, specially an app for which people have said they bought an Android for, and which has been installed on over 1 million devices during the last 12 months,” Leon says.

Attempts from both the developers and TorrentFreak to contact Google about the issue remained unanswered thus far, so there is no other option for FrostWire than to wait.

For now the FrostWire Android app can still be downloaded via the FrostWire website. However, the number of shared files has dropped dramatically since this setting was disabled by default.

In the coming weeks the FrostWire team will turn the Android app into a (more usable) BitTorrent client, as they’ve already done with the desktop version. The source of this new client will be released under a GPL license as soon as the first version is released.

Let’s hope that by then FrostWire will have been allowed back into the Android market.

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

This is one of the main reasons why the FTC filed a complaint against FrostWire at a federal court. The government agency, which aims to protect the rights of consumers, alleged that FrostWire was disregarding users’ privacy by sharing files by default.

Although some companies might view a looming lawsuit by the FTC as a massive problem, the FrostWire team approached the court case in a rather pragmatic way. The commission first contacted FrostWire in May, and by the end of the month the company had already delivered a version complying with the majority of the proposed changes.

“We are software people, and saw this as a bug fix that happened to be reported by the FTC,” FrostWire’s Angel Leon told TorrentFreak.

“Nobody as far as we know ever complained for having finished downloads shared by default, to us it was a given of P2P, but now we feel better that users are in full control of what’s being shared.”

FrostWire users could always prevent automatic sharing in just a click or two, but the FrostWire team understood the issues brought up by the FTC and quickly took action. By leaving Gnutella – which was little more than a spam farm after LimeWire shut down – FrostWire decided to become a BitTorrent-only client.

“We actually made our software compliant by making the allegations irrelevant once we dropped Gnutella. Now there’s no concept of ‘shared folders’ anymore and it’s pretty clear where all files are saved, and if the user is seeding or not,” Leon said.

FrostWire sees the FTC intervention as one of the most helpful bug reports in the company’s history.

“Thanks to this whole ordeal we made our application a lot better. In a matter of a couple of weeks, we had the last version of FrostWire 4.21.x fully compliant with the order, and then we just made the decision to go 100% with BitTorrent,” Leon says.

“With BitTorrent we feel that our users’ privacy is better protected than when we had Gnutella, and now they’re certainly immune to spam search results.”

Aside from the desktop application, FrostWire also has an Android app that runs on a separate file-sharing network developed by the company. For this mobile application the company changed the default settings so users have to opt-in before they share something.

As a result, the number of shared files dropped dramatically, so FrostWire will soon turn the Android application into a BitTorrent client as well. The source of this new client will be released under a GPL license as soon as the first version comes out.

Overall both the FTC and FrostWire are happy with how things worked out. Consumers on the other hand benefit from the relative privacy of BitTorrent, where no shared folders exist.

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

Last November The Pirate Bay shut down its own trackers, arguing that they have been made redundant by DHT and PEX. At the same time, The Pirate Bay team said that they might move away from torrents entirely and switch to offering Magnet links instead.

These are all interesting developments, but to really decentralize BitTorrent one has to take it up a notch. The way most torrent sites are setup makes them vulnerable to legal action from copyright holders, so the real solution might be to move away from web-based torrent indexes.

A rather primitive way to do this is to share torrents over another file-sharing network, and this is exactly what the Gnutella/BitTorrent client Frostwire has now made possible. Without any public announcement and stuffed away in the changelog of FrostWire’s upcoming release we find the following lines:

- New Feature: Gnutella Torrent Search. FrostWire now can search for .torrent metadata files in the Gnutella network.
- Upgraded feature: Optionally FrostWire will copy all .torrent meta files to a shared torrent folder.

Technically speaking these are just minor adjustments to the file-sharing application, but the implications could trigger a revolution in how torrents are shared in the future.

When FrostWire users start downloading a torrent with FrostWire, the client will keep and share the .torrent file on Gnutella. The idea is that as time goes by and more users download more torrents, even if torrent websites are shutdown, all the torrents will live on the P2P network forever.

To make it easier to find torrents on Gnutella, FrostWire also added a specialized “Torrent Search Mode”. As more users install this and later versions – and keep downloading more torrents – the richer these search results will be.

Now FrostWire only needs to offer support for trackerless torrents and they will have completely decentralized the BitTorrent operation with just a few simple adjustments.

Although we believe that FrostWire’s approach is interesting, it will also introduce one major problem. It is relatively easy to make a P2P-powered torrent index, but keeping it clean and malware-free will prove to be very difficult.

Most people might not even be aware of it, but one of the benefits of most torrent sites is that they remove thousands of torrents linking to spam and fake files every day. This will be much harder to do in a P2P-based environment, but not entirely impossible.

Over the last five years the Tribler BitTorrent client has been working on a decentralized torrent index that would make BitTorrent sites obsolete. Unlike simply sharing the torrent files among users, the upcoming release of the Tribler client has built in several spam control and moderation options that allow users to keep the network clean. In addition, newly created torrents can be shared with peers, instead of uploading it to a central server.

We don’t know if FrostWire has plans to implement similar moderation options, but they are absolutely required for a fully decentralized BitTorrent environment.

It will be interesting to see if the idea of a P2P powered and searchable BitTorrent index takes off. For now there are still plenty of good and reliable torrent sites out there, but with continued pressure from the entertainment industry they are not to be taken for granted.

Disclaimer: FrostWire is a TorrentFreak sponsor.

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

That’s where sites like Jamendo and last.fm come in. Often they work in a relational way – “you like this, so we think you’ll like this…” – and can draw a number of new fans. However, it’s rare for peer-to-peer clients themselves to start promoting artists directly, but that’s what FrostWire has done.

Through their new welcome screen, FrostWire users were offered the 6-track album “Oh My” from Sean Fournier for download via BitTorrent. To make things even easier, streaming versions were also available to play, so the music could be sampled without even using the torrent. The key here is the simplicity. With one click, the songs could be played. With another click, the torrent for the songs was launched in the client, and the tracks downloaded.

The question that first comes to mind is: Was it a success? Well, in the first weekend, there were over 25,000 downloads according to the FrostClick site. Now, there are over 32,000 completed, and over 1 terabyte of data transferred via BitTorrent. While it’s no longer being promoted, and due to the limited reach and knowledge of the torrent (to FrostWire users), the growth is still impressive.

The rulings involving peer to peer software over the past few years have directed p2p software companies from trying to build the best network for swapping your Madonna and Metallica mp3s, to ones that actively promote their ‘significant non-infringing uses’. It may cost the company a little in bandwidth (for the streaming of the example tracks) but the cost of this is less than lengthy court cases around vicarious infringement. The goodwill generated is also a nice bonus, being known as a p2p client that actively promotes small artists is good publicity.

For artists, FrostClick is a unique opportunity to reach out to an audience of millions of music fans. Sean was impressed with the results of the campaign, stating on his blog “My downloads have spiked tremendously since FrostClick / FrostWire stepped in so I wanted to take time to thank everyone over there and let them know that I appreciate all the support! This is awesome!”

FrostClick’s Kademlia told TorrentFreak they want to promote people that could get signed. “We’ll be constantly looking for more professional independent content creators to give our users more legal alternatives and great media for free.” FrostClick is currently promoting Audra Hardt, and they have several other artists lined up for their free promotion service.

Disclaimer: FrostWire is one of our ‘sponsors’. This article is written out of free will though, independent of any sponsorship.

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

In the past we’ve reported on the P2P advertising attempts of MediaDefender, but they are not the only company trying to make money from ads on filesharing networks. Last month, P2Pwords launched their adwords service, and more recently, PeerMatrix launched another advertising application targeted at P2P users. Although there is doubt that this type of advertising can be very effective, it’s the ideal cash cow for malware peddlers.

According to a press release from last Friday, PeerMatrix uses a “…revolutionary technology that morphs the name of an ad file to match whatever a P2P user is searching for, thereby dramatically increasing the probability that your ad file will be downloaded and viewed”.

In other words, with this (patented) “revolutionary technology” advertisers will have the possibility to rename their Viagra advert to ‘The Dark Knight Trailer.avi’, if that’s what the user is searching for. Even worse, the advertiser can do this with every file type, including executable malware applications, or trojan horses. The opportunities to use this piece of software to pollute search results are endless.

Angel Leon, lead developer at FrostWire told TorrentFreak that he is not impressed by PeerMatrix’s marketing pitch. Instead, he is worried. “We wouldn’t call this a “revolutionary technology,” he told us. “This is nothing but good old fake search results, otherwise known as spam, and it’s always been in the interest of the community to remove these results.”

PeerMatrix offers their application for free, and it runs on all recent Windows operating systems including Vista and XP. PeerMatrix’s business model is to make money by inserting a small percentage of their own ads along with the files that the ‘advertisers’ choose to spread.

We can’t help but see this application as the ultimate spamming tool. Luckily, most developers of Gnutella based filesharing applications agree with this view. “We’ll try our best to have FrostWire clients recognize these fakes and keep the experience clean, just the way it should be. If a search result doesn’t indicate in some way it’s an advertisement, it’s clearly a deceptive form of spam,” Leon said.

Bernard Trest, President of PeerMatrix disagrees with this description. “YouTube has also been experimenting with overlays and many websites use a similar overlay concept,” he told us. “Essentially the person does not request ads on YouTube however they are forced to view the ad anyhow. If what we are doing is “spam” then Google, Yahoo, and even YouTube are spamming.”

The problem with PeerMatrix, however, is that there is no control over the content that the advertisers put on the P2P networks, even executable files are not a problem. In addition, Trest admitted to us that the ads inserted by their software are not listed as ads in the search results. “The advertising, whether targeted or untargeted, is not designated as advertising,” he said.

If this isn’t the ultimate spamming tool, then what is? We sincerely hope that the developers of filesharing applications will keep a close eye on this new spamming tool, and filter it from the results wherever possible. If that proves to be a problem, many P2P users might have to switch to BitTorrent.

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