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Archive for December, 2009

The music industry’s own research indicates that, on a ridiculous ‘one download equals one lost sale’ basis, losses to online piracy will amount to £200m ($319.67m) in the UK during 2009.

Labeling the claims “melodramatic,” in September boss of ISP BT’s consumer division, John Petter, warned that proposed measures to tackle these supposed loses would prove costly for ISPs – a staggering £365m ($583.4m) a year.

Today, according to a new report, government ministers have admitted that the costs will amount to £500m ($799.2m).

ISPs say that issuing warnings will cost every customer £1.40 ($2.24) and otherwise meddling with accounts at the behest of the music industry will add £25 ($40) total to an annual subscription.

Worryingly, ministers say that this extra cost will force 40,000 UK households offline, with BT’s John Petter calling the plans “collective punishment that goes against natural justice.”

Jeremy Hunt, the Shadow Culture Secretary, said that it is “grossly unfair” for the government to force all broadband customers to foot the bill, and noted that forcing tens of thousands offline will go against government targets of increasing Internet take-up among the most disadvantaged communities.

“We are confident that those costs will be a mere fraction of the stratospheric sums suggested by some ISPs,” a BPI spokesman told The Times, adding, “..and negligibly small when set against their vast annual revenues.”

British music churned over £3.6bn in 2008, up by 4.7%. In the same year British films accounted for 15% of worldwide box office takings, totaling £2.6bn ($4.2bn) – an increase of $1bn over 2007.

So, if this anti-piracy scheme really is destined to bring them an extra £1.7 billion extra in media sales over the next 10 years, why don’t they offset these “negligibly small” costs against their own “vast revenues” ? Because they can get the customer to pay, of course.

When this £25 charge is added to customer accounts, ISPs up and down the UK should put the amount separately on the bill as an extra item which clearly reads “Music industry surcharge.”

Let’s see how that affects piracy and, indeed, the attitudes of people who now quite rightly feel they should at least be getting some music for their money.

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

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 broke records this year as the biggest ever entertainment launch in history. With 4.7 million units sold in the US and UK during the first 24 hours, it pulled in revenues totaling $310 million.

In five days the game’s worldwide sales climbed to $550 million, crushing previous record holders Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (only $394m) and The Dark Knight (just $203.8m).

“In just five days of sell through Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has become the largest entertainment launch in history and a pop culture phenomenon,” Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said commenting on the game’s success. This is, of course, reflected in the number of pirated copies being traded on BitTorrent.

With 4.1 million unauthorized downloads of the PC version alone, the game more than doubles the achievement of last year’s ‘winner‘ Spore. Modern Warfare 2 leads both the PC and Xbox 360 lists, by a landslide.

The overall trend across all platforms is that, unlike last year, all of the games are 2009 releases. What makes Modern Warfare 2’s chart-topping even more impressive is that this has been achieved after just two months of availability. We further see that the figures for the most downloaded titles have more than doubled compared to last year, equaling the growth in uTorrent users.

PC games are by far the most downloaded titles, with on average more than three times the number of downloads compared to Xbox 360 and Wii releases. As expected, Mario titles are in high demand on the Wii.

The data for these lists is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all public BitTorrent trackers. All the data is carefully checked and possible inaccuracies are systematically corrected.

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

The Supreme Court ruling follows a nationwide block of The Pirate Bay In August 2008, when a decree from a public prosecutor instructed ISPs to censor the site. As a result, millions of Italians were banned from accessing the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker.

The Pirate Bay chose to appeal the decision and won the court case. The Court of Bergamo ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement and the block was lifted. However, two months ago the Supreme Court nullified this victory, opening up the possibility for anti-piracy groups to censor The Pirate Bay and many other torrent sites in Italy.

This week the Supreme Court detailed its decision. According to the verdict, BitTorrent sites that host torrent files are playing a significant role in the downloading and uploading process of their users. By doing so they are more than an agnostic search engine such as Google.

The fact that a site is not hosted in Italy or operated by Italians is irrelevant according to the court. The site is visited by many Italians who (in part) use it to share copyrighted material, the Supreme Court argued.

With this verdict in hand, copyright holders can now request The Pirate Bay and other BitTorrent sites to be filtered by Internet service providers. The Pirate Bay is first in line, as its case has now been sent back to the Court of Bergamo.

Pirate Bay lawyers Giovanni Battista Gallus, Giuseppe Campanelli and Francesco Micozzi have informed TorrentFreak that the site will remain accessible for now. “There will be another hearing before the Court of Bergamo,” they told us, “which will have to decide again whether to block The Pirate Bay in Italy or not.”

“We will go again before the Court of Bergamo, where we will have ample grounds to defend The Pirate Bay,” the lawyers noted, adding “And we could even appeal the new decision before the Supreme Court.”

The Supreme Court decision has nevertheless set a dangerous precedent. If The Pirate Bay loses its case it is expected that many other BitTorrent sites will face a shutdown order in the future.

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

UK law firm ACS:Law has made quite a name for itself in recent times. Representing companies such as Germany’s DigiProtect and their pornography business partners, ACS:Law has sent out many thousands of letters to individuals it claims have been sharing their clients’ movies illegally online.

Their scheme has attracted much negative press, even provoking statements from Members of the House of Lords in the UK.

“Of late, we have seen a proliferation of lawyers’ letters, acting for the pornography industry, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, pointed out, often against innocent people asserting copyright claims and threatening court action,” said Lord Clement-Jones recently.

Now there has been a surprising “Christmas update” from ACS:Law. Referencing earlier legal threats they made to thousands of individuals in the UK (you’ve been caught file-sharing, we can prove it, and if you don’t pay up we’re taking you to court), the law firm has announced that it will drop many of its cases.

As Christmas approaches, here at ACS Law we have been working hard dealing with our file sharing projects. We have been reviewing all cases which are currently open, and a good number of these cases have been dropped, where we do not either consider litigation to be a viable option or to be beneficial to our clients.

So, despite the “forensic” standard proof the company claims to hold on individuals, it appears that, as we’ve said many times here on TorrentFreak, this scheme is all about money. If individuals have no money to pay, ACS:Law cannot get blood from a stone.

Furthermore, when trying to force others to pay up who may actually have the money, faced with holding a single IP address as evidence and absolutely no way of identifying a specific individual sitting at a keyboard and conducting or authorizing the actual infringement, they have little choice but to back down.

James Bench, who works with Being Threatened, a consumer group which offers resources to individuals who are targeted by ACS:Law, says that those accused are becoming increasingly empowered by the knowledge currently available.

“Recently leaked documents exposed the inner workings of the process, dubbed by some ‘speculative invoicing,’ showing that claims are assigned a ‘litigation rating’,” he told TorrentFreak.

“Factors affecting the rating tended not to be based on the evidence supporting the claim but on the appointment of legal representation, technical ’savvy’ and the finances of the client – or lack thereof,” he added.

So does this mean that ACS:Law will be backing down completely? Hardly. The law firm says that following the court orders they obtained in November, more threatening ‘pay up or else’ letters will be sent out in January 2010.

Anyone receiving a letter from ACS:Law should refrain from replying to the company until they have spoken to the support team at BeingThreatened.com, who will give completely free advice.

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

Earlier this year several publications claimed that P2P and BitTorrent were dying because of the increased popularity of streaming sites. In reality, BitTorrent is about to close a record year in terms of traffic and usage.

The misleading reports all based their conclusions on data supplied by a network-management firm, which showed that of all Internet traffic, the percentage consumed by P2P has slowly declined. However, those who take a closer look at the data will find that in absolute traffic, P2P continued to grow, with bandwidth used by streaming just growing a little bit faster.

BitTorrent is by no means dying, nor is there a decline. Quite the opposite. All the major BitTorrent sites saw a significant increase in visitor numbers over the past months. TorrentFreak asked Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management, if this growth is also reflected in the usage stats of uTorrent.

“Probably the emergence of things like Hulu and continued growth of Youtube make it seem like Bittorrent is not the only thing driving demand for consumer bandwidth. But we see no evidence whatever that BitTorrent clients are any less popular,” Morris told TorrentFreak.

Around this time last year uTorrent had 28 million unique users a month, and by November 2009 this figure had almost doubled to 52 million monthly users. And things have been going equally well for uTorrent’s little brother, BitTorrent Mainline.

“In addition to this, at the start of this year we saw almost 5 million monthly users of BitTorrent Mainline,” Morris said. “In November 2009 we saw over 10 million.”

These statistics show that despite the legal setbacks The Pirate Bay, Mininova and isoHunt have faced in court, the number of people who are using BitTorrent has continued to grow significantly. There is no indication that this growth will slow, let alone stop, in 2010.

The uTorrent development team also has some major improvements in the pipeline. Last week streaming support was added to the client, and in the coming year it will add file security features and the option for torrent site owners to promote their content within the client.

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

In September 2006, just months after the infamous Pirate Bay raid, the US movie studios turned their attention to isoHunt and other associated websites. Columbia, Disney, Tristar, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal and Warner Bros issued a complaint, stating that isoHunt owner Gary Fung operated file-sharing services and profited from copyright infringement.

On December 21st 2009, a US federal court in California ruled that isoHunt is indeed guilty of violating US copyright law by way of inducement, with the operators having engaged in “purposeful, culpable expression and conduct, aimed at promoting infringing uses of the websites.”

In noting the similarities between this case and earlier ones involving both the Napster and Grokster file-sharing services, Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that a full trial was not required and granted the plaintiffs request for summary judgment.

As noted by Michael Geist, the court also concluded that inducement liability and the safe harbor provisions under the DMCA are incompatible. In this case it means since isoHunt was found to have induced infringement, it did not qualify for safe harbor.

In common with the Mininova court defeat earlier this year, the court was critical of isoHunt (and associated sites) staff actions on the site and in their forums.

The court said the clearest instance of encouraging users to commit infringements was the ‘Box Office Movies’ section of the site. These pages listed the top 20 highest-grossing movies in the US, for which users were invited to upload associated torrents.

“By implementing this feature,” said the court, “Defendants engaged in direct solicitation of infringing activity.”

Furthermore, when isoHunt generated torrent categories, such as ‘Top 20 Movies’, the court said that the fact that these lists “almost exclusively contained copyrighted works and that Defendants never removed these lists” indicated that isoHunt knew about ongoing infringement yet failed to take action to stop it.

Several other instances of staff members giving users advice on how to download copyright movies (including providing .torrent links), rip copyright DVDs and use software such as PeerGuardian were also cited.

Even the forum user ranking system didn’t escape criticism. Since user ranks included titles such as “I pir4te, therefore I am” and “All Day I Dream About W4rez,” the court concluded that the Defendants “promoted their users’ infringing activities by consciously fostering a community that encouraged – indeed, celebrated – copyright infringement.”

The court’s judgment can be downloaded here, or viewed online here. At 46 pages long it’s a pretty heavy read, but contains essential information for anyone interested in what can’t be done when operating a torrent site or other similar service in the US.

At this stage it’s unclear if isoHunt will appeal the US decision, but of course, in the meantime the site is fully operational in Canada, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

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

When The Pirate Bay started back in 2003 the hardware setup was initially really primitive. The site was hosted in Mexico, where Gottfrid hosted the site on a server owned by the company he was working for at the time. The site later moved to Sweden, where Fredrik hosted the tracker on his laptop for a while, but, as the site grew, it had to move on to a more powerful setup.

By the end of 2004, a year after the site launched, the tracker was already tracking a million peers and more than 60,000 torrent files. Around the same time the founders also became aware that it wasn’t just Scandinavians showing an interest in their site. Because of increasing worldwide popularity, The Pirate Bay team completely redesigned the site, which became available in several languages from then on.

This change was much appreciated by the site’s non-Swedish speaking users, but hated by anti-piracy outfits. They saw the tracker as a serious threat, and in response launched a dozen lawsuits to have it removed from the Internet. Today, while nearing the end of the decade, The Pirate Bay has changed its homepage back to its 2003 look, Swedish only.

Despite all the legal trouble, the buyout soap and the decision to close the tracker, The Pirate Bay website is still around at the end of the decade. According to the Pirate Bay team, they are not yet ready to give up or throw in the towel.

“We believe that we have changed something. Not just us, but all of us. The Pirate Bay has always been something extra. We didn’t just wanna run another tracker. We wanted it to mean something. And you our users have helped us with that. The history of the bay is still being written, it’s way too early for a conclusion,” The Pirate Bay team writes.

“2010 has no room for boring debates about old worn out values that old rotting industries try to shove down your throats. 2010 will be the year of the hydra. Let thousands of new exciting projects emerge,” they add.

The past has indeed shown that with every setback the Hydra grows stronger. More new sites and trackers will emerge in the new year while old favorites fade in the background.

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

by Samantha Stollenwerck

by Aaron Carter

Although it won’t ring any bells with the ‘younger’ torrenters, the name Mongo56 will certainly bring back some great memories for BitTorrent veterans who have been around for more than four years.

In 2005 the site was one of the largest BitTorrent trackers around, operating without a searchable index of torrent files much like OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent are doing right now. As of today there are still a few older torrents floating around that use the tracker which has been unresponsive for years.

However, back in the day its role with most BitTorrent users was vital, since clients did not support more than one tracker for a torrent, which meant that a download would simply stop working if the tracker was experiencing downtime.

During 2005, Mongo56 broke several records. It was the first XBNBT based tracker to run with more than 100,000 peers connected, and it broke the XBTT tracker record when it hit 763,000 peers. Great times were ahead, so it seemed, but continuous attacks on the tracker caused it to close prematurely.

“As of December 1st 2005 Mongo56.org will no-longer exist. I am sorry about this, but after over a month of battling flood attacks and the like it’s time to kill the tracker,” the site’s owner informed its users.

Since Mongo56 went down, thousands of new trackers have come and gone, and now, at the end of 2009 where standalone trackers have had somewhat of a revival, the name Mongo56 has resurfaced.

The operator of the new tracker hosted on the Mongo56.co.cc domain has no connection with the operators of the old tracker, but simply wants to reintroduce the brand name. “I used the name simply because I loved how much of a following they had, and I knew that domain would bring back good memories,” TorrentFreak was told.

Unlike most other standalone trackers, the new Mongo56 uses the PeerTracker software, and seems to be running smoothly for now. But, with DHT, PEX and multitracker torrents, tracker uptime is not as crucial as it was back in 2005. Nevertheless, Mongo56’s introduction is a welcome one – BitTorrent users can never have too many options when it comes to finding other peers.

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

Kid Cudi knows how to make jaws drop.

In fact, after an hour-plus set at Club Nokia in Los Angeles last night, the capacity crowd was left collectively speechless. Witnessing Cudi live is like seeing Jay-Z, Notorious B.I.G. or Eminem in the early days. He doesn’t need to do much to impress;

IFPI and the BPI would have people believe there are millions upon millions of illicit file-sharers in Britain, milking the very life-blood out of the industry. Much of their online presence is gearing to achieving this impression.

While the situation is a lot less serious than they make out, it’s difficult to dispute that in the absence of really attractive alternatives, large numbers of people are indeed turning to file-sharing networks and services to satisfy their music discovery needs.

The BPI and their international counterparts would also like to create the impression that the situation is very much black and white, that an illegal downloader engages in his or activities in order to get music for free and thus never makes a contribution to the industry. But this assertion, that file-sharers don’t contribute in any meaningful way, is simply false and definitely not that black and white.

Many people are using file-sharing as a music discovery tool. Indeed, file-sharers are some of the industry’s most knowledgeable and dedicated followers, but those who have simply found new, more efficient and increasingly user friendly ways to acquire music. They are, however, happy to put their hands in their pockets for the right products, for the right concerts and for quality merchandise.

One such individual is English singer-songwriter Jamie Cullum, who in a recent interview admitted that, like many of his countrymen, he is an avid user of file-sharing networks to acquire illegal copies of music.

“I’m a music consumer of the highest order, and I spend an awful lot of my time looking for music, buying music, downloading music legally and illegally. I make no bones about it – if there’s some Thom Yorke EP floating around and it’s not out until next week, then I’ll download it illegally,” he explained.

But like many file-sharers, Cullum’s connection to the music doesn’t stop there. “However, the following week I’ll buy it because I want the artwork, and I want to see the notes and to find out where it was recorded and all the rest,” he added.

The flip side, says Cullum, is that his own album ‘The Pursuit’ has also been heavily pirated after being leaked online, with file-sharers downloading it as many times as it was legally purchased. Cullum shares the views of many when he says that all-out rampant piracy is not the answer, but nor is taking measures to punish file-sharers.

“The problem is, we’ve gone too far. You can’t start punishing people – you’d be punishing people like me, who spends thousands of pounds a year online, because I illegally downloaded something from a blog,” he says pragmatically.

The solution to the problem, says Cullum, lies with competition. Somehow the music industry needs to come up with legal services that are “so sophisticated and so comprehensive” that people won’t be interested in going to file-sharing sites.

Jamie Cullum begins his next US tour in March 2010 and won’t have much difficulty selling-out his chosen venues. Just how many of the people in attendance will have experienced his music after getting some samples from file-sharing networks is open to speculation, but they will be there – spending their money and supporting the artist.

In the end, perhaps that’s all that matters.

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

IFPI and the BPI would have people believe there are millions upon millions of illicit file-sharers in Britain, milking the very life-blood out of the industry. Much of their online presence is gearing to achieving this impression.

While the situation is a lot less serious than they make out, it’s difficult to dispute that in the absence of really attractive alternatives, large numbers of people are indeed turning to file-sharing networks and services to satisfy their music discovery needs.

The BPI and their international counterparts would also like to create the impression that the situation is very much black and white, that an illegal downloader engages in his or activities in order to get music for free and thus never makes a contribution to the industry. But this assertion, that file-sharers don’t contribute in any meaningful way, is simply false and definitely not that black and white.

Many people are using file-sharing as a music discovery tool. Indeed, file-sharers are some of the industry’s most knowledgeable and dedicated followers, but those who have simply found new, more efficient and increasingly user friendly ways to acquire music. They are, however, happy to put their hands in their pockets for the right products, for the right concerts and for quality merchandise.

One such individual is English singer-songwriter Jamie Cullum, who in a recent interview admitted that, like many of his countrymen, he is an avid user of file-sharing networks to acquire illegal copies of music.

“I’m a music consumer of the highest order, and I spend an awful lot of my time looking for music, buying music, downloading music legally and illegally. I make no bones about it – if there’s some Thom Yorke EP floating around and it’s not out until next week, then I’ll download it illegally,” he explained.

But like many file-sharers, Cullum’s connection to the music doesn’t stop there. “However, the following week I’ll buy it because I want the artwork, and I want to see the notes and to find out where it was recorded and all the rest,” he added.

The flip side, says Cullum, is that his own album ‘The Pursuit’ has also been heavily pirated after being leaked online, with file-sharers downloading it as many times as it was legally purchased. Cullum shares the views of many when he says that all-out rampant piracy is not the answer, but nor is taking measures to punish file-sharers.

“The problem is, we’ve gone too far. You can’t start punishing people – you’d be punishing people like me, who spends thousands of pounds a year online, because I illegally downloaded something from a blog,” he says pragmatically.

The solution to the problem, says Cullum, lies with competition. Somehow the music industry needs to come up with legal services that are “so sophisticated and so comprehensive” that people won’t be interested in going to file-sharing sites.

Jamie Cullum begins his next US tour in March 2010 and won’t have much difficulty selling-out his chosen venues. Just how many of the people in attendance will have experienced his music after getting some samples from file-sharing networks is open to speculation, but they will be there – spending their money and supporting the artist.

In the end, perhaps that’s all that matters.

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

The Comcast BitTorrent throttling story is one of the major case studies for net neutrality. More than two years have passed since we broke the story that led to an FCC investigation and even lawsuits from affected users.

In one of the class action suits that were brought about from the long-running incident, Comcast has now agreed to settle, meaning those affected may be eligible for compensation.

About two and a half years ago, reports surfaced on what appeared to be the throttling of BitTorrent connections by Comcast. The throttling, first discovered by Rob Toplowski, was confirmed by TorrentFreak, and was first reported in August 2007. Other news agencies picked it up later, especially after tests by the EFF and Associated Press confirmed events and included reports that other network based activity was also affected.

Comcast long-denied any wrongdoing, but a leaked memo revealed that the company went as far as instructing its front-line staff to lie about the issue. Then the FCC got involved and things deteriorated. At a hearing at Harvard, Comcast packed the venue with people they bussed in, but it didn’t stop the BitTorrent throttling practice being termed a ‘hacker technique’.

Eventually, some assurances were made, and the FCC ordered Comcast to stop using Sandvine. Meanwhile lawsuits had been filed. One of these, Hart vs Comcast of Alameda, attained class action status, and there is now a proposed settlement.

Comcast has agreed to put $16M into a fund to pay BitTorrent users that were inconvenienced by the ‘network management’.

The downside is the size of the settlement. If you qualify, you can receive a maximum of $16, yet still Comcast refuses to accept it did anything wrong. The administrators of the settlement have set up a website to deal with questions about the case which can be found at www.p2pcongestionsettlement.com

It’s not hard to imagine that some customers will feel this doesn’t go far enough, and undoubtedly the discussion on this topic will continue. For the affected Comcast users there is still time to decide how to proceed – the deadline for claims is August 14th 2010. Meanwhile, network neutrality remains a pipe dream for most people.

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

Poison’s Bret Michaels knows “love” better than anyone.

Not only has he fronted Poison for almost 25 years, but he’s been the subject of VH1’s hilarious hit reality show, Rock of Love since 2007. He even wrote “Every Rose has Its Thorns,” which undeniably makes him something of an expert on love.