Best MP3 Music

Archive for November, 2009

The Color Turning are ready for the zombie apocalypse when it happens.

“Some parts on Good Hands Bad Blood sound like zombie music,” laughs frontman Steve Scavo.

Good Hands certainly could serve as the soundtrack for impending zombie doom, but it’s much more than that. Steve and his cohorts

Earlier this year, TorrentFreak reported on computer science student, Juan Jose Carrasco Colonel. The 26 year-old resident of Bonar, Spain, ran two eD2K file-sharing link sites known as Elitelmula and Etmusica. Both were closed some months ago after action by music and anti-piracy group SGAE led to a court order being served on the sites’ host.

Then in May, Juan had a home visit from individuals who said they were from the court. Handing Juan documentation he didn’t understand, they gave the impression that they had a warrant to enter his home and make an inspection of his computers and hard drives.

In fact, it turned out one was a lawyer for SGAE, the second a SGAE computer expert and another a clerk, who had come looking for the stats from Elitemula and Etmusica, which supposedly reflected the downloads of music made via links on those sites between September and December 2007.

They searched the entire house, going through both Juan’s and family members’ possessions. Finally Juan managed to get lawyer David Bravo on the telephone who, along with Javier de la Cueva, were the legal team for P2P developer Pablo Soto. Bravo confirmed that the supposed warrant did not authorize the individuals to be in Juan’s house and ordered them to leave.

TorrentFreak has been in contact with Javier de la Cueva, who was able to give us an interesting update on the case.

A Spanish court, after initially submitting to requests by SGAE that both Etmusica and Elitemula should be closed and hard drives seized for evidence, has now revoked the decision after demands by Juan’s lawyers. The hard drive evidence was dismissed and both sites can now be reopened.

“The reason for reopening the websites is that a hyperlink, per se, does not violate intellectual property law,” Javier de la Cueva told TorrentFreak.

On the dismissal of the hard drive ‘evidence’, Javier explained that this was due to their proof that it is impossible for the site’s users’ sharing statistics to be stored in it.

“As I said in the hearing: how can it be that an interchange between a Polish and an
Argentinian would be registered in [Juan's] hard disk if not even a single bit passes through my client’s website? I explained to the judge how P2P networks function and he was convinced that this evidence is impossible and useless, so he annulled the previous resolution held by the same court.”

Javier also explained that it’s important to note that SGAE requested injunctions to be taken out on Etmusic and Elitemula without summoning their client.

“When this happens and injunctions are adopted, the defendant should have the opportunity of opposition, and this is what we have won,” he told us.

Furthermore, SGAE ‘forgot’ to tell the court that earlier criminal proceedings brought by PROMUSICAE to achieve preliminary injunctions against both sites, had already been dismissed.

Due to this unfortunate bout of amnesia, SGAE has been fined 500 Euros for ‘mala fides’ (operating in bad faith) as it was concluded that there was an intention to avoid the defendants right to a defense.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The rookie BitTorrent indexer KickassTorrents has been growing steadily since early 2009, but in the last few weeks the site has seen a surge in daily visitor numbers thanks to the BitTorrent client, Vuze.

Unlike most other BitTorrent applications, Vuze has a search feature that returns results from torrent sites within the application itself so users don’t have to use their web browser. With the latest update of Vuze, KickassTorrents was added to the search.

Luckily, the owner of the site was contacted by Vuze beforehand to warn him about the traffic spike that was ahead, and to request some changes to the search template so it could be easily integrated into the client. This warning was indeed necessary, as the site received an additional 100,000 unique visits a day through Vuze.

These are impressive numbers indeed, but not that surprising if you consider that Vuze has more than a million active users that use the client at any given hour of the day. According to Vuze’s Director of Marketing Chris Thun, two thirds of these users utilize the built-in search functionality.

“Our search is a pretty popular feature with over 65% of monthly Vuze users leveraging the convenience and speed of Vuze search. My guess would be that we’re driving a fair amount of traffic to these sites,” Chris told TorrentFreak. Vuze users can download the torrents directly in the client, or visit the website the torrents are listed on.

Vuze’s integrated search currently uses Mininova and KickassTorrents. The latter replaced BTjunkie in the most recent update of the client. “We liked KickassTorrents’ clean design and layout, and liked the quality of the results coming from their API integration,” said Chris when explaining Vuze’s decision.

“BTJunkie is still an option for users, as it can be added to their default list of search sites simply by clicking ‘add/edit’ in the filters on the right side of the Vuze search results page. In fact, a wide variety of sites can be added to personalize the Vuze results,” he added, referring to the dozens of Vuze search templates that are available online.

There is no doubt that Vuze’s listing of KickassTorrents as the default search engine is a huge deal for the site. BTjunkie on the other hand wasn’t even aware of the fact that they were delisted. With millions of visits every day, a few thousand visits can go easily unnoticed.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The Beach Boys, Arctic Monkeys, Julian Casablancas

Joey McIntyre tells ARTISTdirect.com editor and Dolor author Rick Florino about a very, very memorable Thanksgiving with his family and the New Kids in the third installment of this exclusive blog series….

Thanksgiving Memories—

It’s always a funny thing when people ask me about old family

In file-sharing terms, Spain currently has among the most relaxed laws of leading European countries. The country is believed to have some of the highest rates of online sharing of music and movies and currently it is perfectly legal, providing no money is made directly from infringement, to run BitTorrent and eDonkey sites.

As the copyright industries ramp up their lobbying, the government is finding it more and more difficult to maintain their current position, and is currently examining new ways to deal with illicit file-sharing.

At the opening day of a conference bringing together leaders of the telecommunications industry, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Vivane Reding, said that if the Spanish government implements measures to disconnect copyright infringers from the Internet without the oversight of a judge, it risks coming into conflict with the EU.

“Spanish measures that allow for the disruption of Internet access without a fair hearing before a judge, are certain to clash with the European Union,” she told the Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT) conference in Barcelona yesterday.

Criticizing France’s Hadopi legislation, Reding stressed that repressing people would not solve the problems of Internet piracy, noting that disconnections may even run counter to the “rights and freedoms which have become part of Europe’s values since the French Revolution.”

Furthermore, the “fundamental freedoms” of EU citizens which Reding insists forbids countries from disconnecting alleged file-sharers without a procedure involving a judge, also applies to Internet service providers.

This is of particular interest to customers of Ireland’s largest ISP, Eircom. Earlier this year IRMA – which controls 90% of Ireland’s recorded music and represents the likes of EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner – reached a private agreement with the ISP to implement a 3 strikes deal for alleged pirates, with IRMA discontinuing legal action against it in return.

The arrangement is an entirely private one, with no judicial oversight, which will likely bring it into conflict with the EU.

IRMA also took legal action against BT, Ireland’s largest ISP, and the country’s largest cable operator, UPC Ireland, to force them to follow suit.

However, last week IRMA discontinued its lawsuit against BT Ireland, as the ISP has already transferred its Internet customers to Vodafone. It is unclear if IRMA will now go after Vodafone, but the music group says it will continue to pursue UPC.

In addition, it will be interesting to see how the statement by the European Commission affects the Digital Economy Bill that was presented in the UK last week. The proposed legislation will also call for a disconnection of repeated copyright infringers, a measure that’s proving unpopular among the public. Thousands of people have already petitioned against the new bill.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

11/24/2009
$15.99

11/24/2009
$11.99

By allowing its users to access millions of songs for free, the music streaming Spotify has revolutionized the music industry by handing them a potential competitor to illegal downloading.

Unfortunately, the labels themselves are not as enthusiastic as most users are, as they doubt the service’s ability to generate enough revenue.

Indeed, if we take a look at the numbers relating to Lady Gaga that we reported a few days ago, Spotify is barely generating more revenue than most artists make from illicit file-sharing. With an income of only $167 for more than a million plays, he/she is not going to be able to pay the rent.

However, it turns out that this might not be the fault of Spotify’s business model, but rather the involvement of some of the major labels in the project. As reported before, Sony BMG bought 5.8% of Spotify for 2,935 Euros, Universal Music got 4.8% for 2,446 Euros, Warner Music paid 1,957 Euros for 3.8% and EMI pocketed 1.9% for an investment of 980 Euros.

Lady Gaga is signed by Def Jam (Universal) which partly owns Spotify, which probably has a significant impact on the revenue she makes. After all, the major labels wouldn’t pay the artists from their own pockets would they?

This was confirmed recently by Lily Allen who commented on Twitter: “Did you know the major[s] own hold massive stakes in Spotify, and earn advertising revenue at yet another loss to the artist?”

Of course, this diminished revenue wouldn’t be a problem if Lily signed her music up for digital distribution with a service like RouteNote, who offer the full per track rate, and only take 10% on the back end.

In fact, TorrentFreak has heard from various sources that independent distributors can get deals of at least $0.03 per play with Spotify. This adds up to a pay day of $30,000 instead of $167 for a million plays, which suddenly sounds like an altogether better deal.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

This week there are four newcomers in the top 10 including ‘Gamer,’ which ended up as the second most downloaded movie on BitTorrent this week.

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The power of the riff compelled SLASH and pretty much everyone else at LAYN Rocks last night.

The legendary Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver guitarist certainly knows how to give a crowd a good time and, alongside some friends, that’s exactly what he did for almost two hours.

Those

Check out the two exclusive features below for playlists and music selections from Ninja Assassin’s star Rain and director James McTeigue! They both let ARTISTdirect.com editor and Dolor author Rick Florino know what the best tunes to chop someone up to are and even compare the film to a record…Peep

Wu-Tang Clan, Rain

Nick Cave, MC Rock Star

Hollywood Undead know how to throw a party—for the end of the world. The final show of the band’s Vatos Locos tour at the Wiltern in Los Angeles was an apocalyptic good time to say the least. Not since Guns N’ Roses has a band embodied the dangerous, strange and utterly alive spirit at the heart of

Last week, details finally emerged concerning the Digital Economy Bill. In a nutshell, the bill aims to turn elements of Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report into law.

Internet users will face being monitored by the music and movie industries, and their ISPs forced to pass on infringement notices based on rights holder supplied evidence alone. ISPs will also have to keep records of who gets warnings and share this information with the rights holders.

If reduction targets aren’t met, file-sharers could have action taken against them by their own ISP, including the ultimate sanction of disconnection, all this without setting foot in a court. Also on the cards is allowing changes to UK copyright law without Parliamentary oversight, which means whatever the government decides to do, it can, with no threat of being blocked. Under the influence of the music and movie industries as it is, this can only go one way.

One of the benefits of living in a democracy is that entities like the Digital Economy Bill are preceded by everyone having their say. Rights holders, Internet service providers, consumer groups and, of course, the lowly individual, were allowed to participate via the BERR consultation.

While rights holders achieved almost everything they asked for and will undoubtedly be very happy with the outcome, the government insisted last week that ISPs were also widely supporting the Digital Economy Bill. But that claim turned out to be false, with the Internet Service Providers Association saying that it was “extremely disappointed” with aspects of the proposals aimed at illicit file-sharing.

Consumer groups also submitted to the consultation, including those from Which? and BeingThreatened, a portal created to provide help and support to ISP account holders who have been wrongfully accused of infringement by copyright holders.

“We are extremely disappointed, though not at all surprised with the nature of the response the government have given. Despite the 13 page response consisting of 11 pages of summary, much of which relates to the concern over the evidential collection, due process and appropriate appeal, the government makes absolutely no mention of this in the response,” they told TorrentFreak.

Indeed, as they quite rightly point out, the only items that remain in focus are those relating to protecting the entertainment industries by the introduction of technological solutions and a 3 strikes-style regime.

“The government response fails completely to put any provisions in place to deal with mistaken allegations. Whilst there is a right for appeal, there is no consequence to a rights holder for making vexatious and false claims,” they added.

Also of concern is that the new system being put forward by the government does not trump the old system, indeed they will remain in operation together. If rights holders and lawyers such as ACS:Law wish to continue with their campaigns of sending letters and demanding huge sums of money instead, they will be perfectly entitled to do so, perhaps with the added assistance of the new information ISPs will be compelled to store.

However, what BeingThreatened find most disappointing is that despite a large opposition to the plans to deal with file-sharing, many of the dissenting voices have simply been ignored, with the government giving submissions from rights holders and their umbrella groups absolute priority.

“This does not give the majority of respondents from our community a feeling that democracy has been observed. It is clear that the consultation, at least from the government’s point of view, was nothing more than a box-ticking exercise. It looks suspiciously like there was never any intent to engage in a transparent democratic process. I am certain that our group will not be alone in these views,” they added.

The full statement BeingThreatened can be found here and all the (corporate and individual) responses to the consultation are available on the BERR website.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.