Best MP3 Music

Actor Corey Haim, 38-years-old, was discovered dead this morning from an accidental drug overdose. The LA County Coroner said that Haim was unresponsive in the Oakwood apartments and confirmed dead at Providence St. Joseph's Medical Center at 2:15am. Haim was the star of '80s classics such as The

For years the RIAA and other copyright holders have been sending copyright infringement notices to ISPs, requesting they forward them to their customers. ISPs including Comcast have always kindly complied with these requests, but remained a neutral party.

It therefore came as a surprise when we found out that three major US ISPs – Comcast, Cox and Warner Cable – have been funding research which aims to help copyright holders track down and gather evidence against BitTorrent pirates more efficiently.

Unlike most of the ‘passive’ BitTorrent tracking tools that are in fashion today, BitStalker uses an ‘active’ method through which they can actually prove that the BitTorrent client associated with an IP-address is sharing files. Where the passive methods wrongfully accuse 1 in 10 downloaders, BitStalker promises to avoid such false positives.

The researchers who developed BitStalker further claim (pdf) that their tool is much more effective than the current competition, as it would allow copyright holders to get information on 20 million BitTorrent users for a bargain price of $12.40. What remains unclear, however, is why three large ISPs are interested in funding this project.

It is no secret that the RIAA has been pushing Comcast, Cox and other ISPs to take stricter measures against copyright infringers, including the ultimate sanction of terminating customers’ Internet access. However, thus far the ISPs have largely maintained their neutral position as information carriers.

Whether the funding of BitStalker’s research is a signal that this may change is open for speculation. Another argument for ISPs to join could be that they want to protect their customers from receiving copyright infringement notices in error.

Regarding the BitStalker method of tracking BitTorrent users, we can say that it is not as revolutionary as the researchers portray it. TorrentFreak spoke to several people who are currently operating the largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet and none of them was impressed by BitStalker’s technology.

If BitStalker is indeed implemented the large scale monitoring will have to be executed from thousands of IP-addresses. Most trackers have rules in place so that one single IP-address will be banned from the tracker if it connects to too many torrents.

Similarly, if BitStalker was put on a cloud service like the research suggests, it wouldn’t take long before these IP-ranges would appear in block-lists, rendering BitStalker useless.

If we add to this that BitStalker’s active BitTorrent tracking method will require users to be ‘connectible’, which a large percentage of users aren’t, this means that it will result in many false negatives. The researchers report that they could only connect to less than half of all available peers, which might be caused in the main by the connectability issue.

Whatever the motivations are for Comcast and the other ISPs to fund this project, the good news is that less people will be accused of uploading something they haven’t. Whether BitStalker will really be that more efficient depends on one’s definition of efficiency. For now, we doubt that it will result in a global BitTorrent crackdown.

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

by Rainbow Arabia

by ALO

by Rihanna

UseNeXT is a brand operated by Munich and London-based company, Aviteo Ltd. UseNeXT is one of the most popular Usenet services around today and has traditionally advertised extensively within the BitTorrent community and on many torrent sites.

On 19 December 2006, performing rights group GEMA, which handles the copyrights of more than 1 million rightsholders worldwide, filed for an injunction against UseNeXT. GEMA had earlier leveled accusations at UseNeXT’s advertising in which it said, among other things, the company claimed to offer 1 million MP3s through its service.

“[UseNeXT] advertised its fee-based access with unambiguous references to illegal exchange platforms. In particular it publicized the anonymity, speed and security of access to contents available on Usenet,” GEMA said in a statement, adding: “On top of that, the service also offers special, perfected search software that makes it easier to locate and manage musical works and other contents protected by copyright.”

On 18 January 2007, the Hamburg District Court issued a preliminary injunction against UseNeXT’s operators, which included instructions for it to change the way in which it advertised its product and barring it from providing musical works from GEMA’s repertoire. UseNeXT objected to the decision and disputed that it had ever encouraged subscribers to download copyright works, arguing that its use of the terms ‘unfiltered’ and ‘anonymous’ related to features inherent in the Usenet system.

On 17 February 2010, the Hamburg District Court handed down a preliminary injunction against UseNeXT which bars the service from offering a sample 100 musical works to which GEMA administers the copyright. The injunction also states that UseNeXT must go further than simply modifying its advertising in order to protect GEMA’s copyrights.

Although not necessarily liable for infringements, the Court said that Usenet providers would have to take responsibility for the services and environments they provide.

In a statement, GEMA said that the Court of Hamburg’s decision represents expanded liabilities for Usenet providers which go further than regulating their approach to advertising, but also apply when modified advertising proves insufficient to protect rights holders.

“The adoption of the preliminary injunction is a success in our commitment to the protection of copyright,” said Dr. Harald Heker, Chief Executive Officer of GEMA. “Second, the ruling also represents a further important step towards a comprehensive responsibility of the Usenet service operator for its offer.”

At this stage it’s unclear how UseNeXT will choose to comply with the injunction. Unlike services such as Rapidshare that operate their own servers and actually store content, UseNeXT are a reseller of the Highwinds Usenet service. UseNeXT does not store any content, Highwinds do.

UseNeXT used to offer a search engine and software interface to access Usenet, so conceivably something could’ve been implemented there to bar access to the GEMA titles mentioned in the injunction. However, recent changes to their service means they are no longer offering those solutions but suggesting the use of 3rd party software, with one particular solution from Tangysoft up front.

Nevertheless, the Court said that UseNeXT is responsible for the service it’s re-selling so the company will have to find an answer somehow. Many Usenet providers are already working with rights holders to automate the removal of content, so solutions are available. How quickly and comprehensively UseNeXT acts will remain to be seen.

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

September last year saw the passing of France’s controversial three-strikes ‘Hadopi’ law which allows the music industry to track down repeated copyright infringers with the ultimate goal of decreasing the country’s piracy rate.

Under the new law alleged copyright infringers will be reported to a judge once they have received three warnings. The judge will then review the case and hand down any one of a range of penalties, from fines through to severing the Internet connection of the infringer.

Proponents of the new law claimed that the law would convince millions of people to stop downloading copyrighted content through file-sharing networks. Most critics, however, doubted the effectiveness of the system and pointed out that there are many ways to circumvent the law.

A new study published by the University of Rennes shows that the critics are indeed right. The researchers looked into the habits of downloaders before and after the law was implemented. They found that instead of reducing piracy levels, the piracy rate actually went up by 3%.

This increase in piracy shows that the French are not changing their downloading habits much, despite the tougher legislation. There is, however, an interesting shift in the sources people use to download copyrighted movies and music. At an increasing rate the French are using streaming services along with file-hosting ‘cyberlockers’ such as Rapidshare and Megaupload.

These services are not covered by the Hadopi law and therefore ’safe’ to use. Conversely, usage of P2P services such as BitTorrent dropped from 17.1 percent to 14.6 percent between September and December last year. Overall the research seems to suggest that the looming disconnection threat has changed how and where people get pirated content, while the piracy rate itself increased.

Another remarkable statistic uncovered by the researchers is that half of all P2P users who download copyrighted content also buy digital content online. This means that if these users were disconnected from the Internet under the new law, the music industry would lose customers and thus revenue.

The overall message put forward by the research seems to be that it is hard to deter people from copyright infringement when there are plenty of alternatives to bypass the legislation. This does not only hold for the French case but can also be applied to the UK and other countries where tougher anti-piracy laws are implemented.

The answer to the increasing piracy rates worldwide is not legislation. Instead, the entertainment industry may accomplish much more by innovating and expanding their online business so that it meets the demands of today’s digital consumers.

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

"The Hurt Locker," a gritty, intense film that follows Explosive Ordnance Disposal technicians during the Iraq war, was the big winner of six Academy Awards on Sunday night (March 7), taking home six Academy Awards, including Best Picture as well as Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow, who becomes the

2009 was a breakthrough year for the Pirate Party movement. With more than 7 percent of the vote, the Swedish Pirate Party secured two seats in the European Parliament.

A few weeks later, the Pirates in Germany entered the local Parliament after a member of another party switched sides.

In 2010 the Pirate Parties hope to continue this hot streak, especially during the Swedish national elections later this year. However, Sweden is not the only country where a Pirate Party will end up at the ballot. In the UK the local Pirate Party hopes to compete as well and the Dutch party has now decided to do the same.

In recent months there has been a lot of political debate regarding Dutch copyright law which currently allows people to download copyrighted movies and music for personal use. Several established parties have shown interest in criminalizing file-sharers, something the Pirate Party hopes to avoid.

Instead, the Pirates would like to shorten the copyright term to 5 years and legalize sharing of all copyrighted material on the Internet. Tim Kuik, head honcho at the local anti-piracy outfit BREIN, is not afraid of politically organized pirates and described the Party’s plans as short sighted and unrealistic.

Samir Allioui, Chairman of the Pirate Party, told TorrentFreak that he’s very happy with Kuik’s negative comments. “He gives people a good reason to vote for us,” he said, referring to the negative view that most people have of BREIN.

If elected, the party will do everything it can to stop abuses of copyright, promote Net Neutrality and push for patent reform. The party is further committed to increasing transparency, strengthening fundamental rights and protecting privacy.

Despite the enthusiasm of the party’s members, there is still a long way to go before they can actually compete in the election on June 9th. One of the biggest hurdles is the requirement to deposit a sum of 12,000 euros, a barrier which is meant to prevent too many parties from entering the election.

Samir is confident that they will be able to raise the money in the weeks to come. He encourages all sympathizers to become a member of the Party and help to get the Pirate Party on the ballot.

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

Around seven years ago when pressure was first starting to form against the then-fledgling BitTorrent scene, attitudes were pretty much as they are now. “They’ll never stop it, we’ll always find a way,” cried the masses grabbing music, movies and software for free, and few disagreed.

Of course, there will always be a way to acquire media free of charge, the last few decades have shown us that. But the media industries are now having to find new ways to defend their corner. There has always been talk of Big Movies or Big Music ‘owning’ politicians and lawmakers, but while this is true to the extent that their immense lobbying power allows, there has also been another more serious threat on the back-burner.

If the RIAA or MPAA owned – literally – all the major ISPs, they could affect the piracy landscape quicker than ever before. A simple rewrite or tweaking of subscriber’s Terms of Service would ensure that anyone proven to be a pirate could be ejected from the Internet in an instant, no laws needed. While this is unfeasible right now, there are easier ways of encouraging the same, like business partnerships and promises of profit.

According to a new study titled “Is There A Commercial Argument For ISP Music Services” commissioned by the BPI on behalf of Universal Music and carried out by industry analyst Ovum, if the UK’s most prominent ISPs all more or less immediately launched subscriber packages that included bundled music, they could generate new revenues of £103 million by 2013.

The BPI say this figure is based on a ‘medium adoption scenario’ and is an amount equal to 41% of the total 2009 digital music market. In an ‘accelerated adoption scenario’ the study says that the revenues could nearly double to £203m.

Aside from the profitability implied by these revenues, the report seems keen to offer other incentives to the major ISPs – Virgin Media, Sky, BT, O2, Orange and TalkTalk – to get involved in the music business. The study suggests that the inclusion of a music element to bundles would reduce subscriber ‘churn’ – the rate at which customers cancel their contracts. The example given is that an ISP with 3.5m customers could save £20m if the bundling of music cut churn by 10%, although there is no information to show that it actually would.

While suggesting good business is to be had in getting a little involved in the music business, the BPI is keen to point out that for ISPs, the more involved they get, the more they can make.

“The revenue prospects for bundled ISP music services would be substantially increased if services were offered to consumers in tandem with meaningful action to tackle illegal music downloading,” say the BPI.

We approached TalkTalk, an ISP referred to in the study, for a comment.

“TalkTalk thanks the BPI for its strategic business advice. Though some may question the value of such insight from an industry which has failed to acknowledge the impact of new technology on its own business models and is pressing the Government to criminalise its biggest customers,” a spokesperson told TorrentFreak.

Clearly TalkTalk doesn’t want to do the music industry’s dirty work for them, but if other ISPs got heavily involved in the music distribution business it might be considered natural for them to try and protect their revenues. That said, the leap from simple common carrier to having a vested interest could complicate their position.

Nevertheless, another issue the report highlights is that heavy competition is driving down the price of broadband services while consumer desire for bandwidth continues to increase. In any business working in plain commodities, the desire to bring in more profitable “added-value” products is strong.

“It’s increasingly clear that it isn’t smart to be a ‘dumb pipe’. This report shows that the revenue potential of digital music services alone makes sound economic sense for ISPs,” said BPI Chief Executive, Geoff Taylor.

So let’s imagine that the ISPs want to get involved in this market, offering bundled music for an extra £6.49 (the price level suggested in the report) – what would be so wrong with that? It’s pretty affordable after all, so why not give it a chance?

“With the right service platform, user experience and merchandising strategy, ISPs have an opportunity to reach a green-field digital music market that mainstream download-to-own services such as iTunes do not reach today,” explains report co-author and Ovum’s principal analyst, Adrian Drury.

So these suggested services aren’t of the “fill up your iPod” type, but of the “can only be used sitting-at-your-computer streaming services with limited download allocation” type. Surprised? Us neither.

Trying to convert those currently using file-sharing services over to paid models is already a big challenge. Trying to switch them to an inferior product whilst being hounded by their ISP on behalf of the music industry is a different matter altogether, and something TalkTalk refuses to be drawn into.

“Perhaps there is a goldmine for ISPs in legal downloads but that will not alter the fact that the copyright protection proposals being proposed threaten human rights,” their spokesperson told us. “They will penalise innocent broadband customers. They are expensive, unwieldy and utterly futile.”

If the record labels really did own your ISP, this is the type of environment subscribers would be pushed into. And you’d still have to fill up your iPod elsewhere at additional cost.

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

This week there are four newcomers (three comebacks actually) in the top 10. New Moon is the most downloaded movie on BitTorrent.

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.

Week ending March 7, 2010

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(…)	New Moon	4.6 / trailer
2	(1)	From Paris With Love (R5)	6.6 / trailer
3	(2)	Ninja Assassin	6.6 / trailer
4	(5)	Sherlock Holmes (DVDscr)	7.7 / trailer
5	(4)	The Boondock Saints II	7.1 / trailer
6	(3)	Legion (R5)	5.3 / trailer
7	(…)	Up In The Air	7.9 / trailer
8	(…)	2012	6.0 / trailer
9	(10)	Avatar (DVDscr)	8.6 / trailer
10	(…)	The Hurt Locker	8.0 / trailer

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

Philip Anselmo remains "stronger than all." In fact, the singer is just as driven, determined and dead set on domination as he was when he first uttered that refrain on Pantera's genre-defining Far Beyond Driven in 1994. Not only has Philip given voice to some of the greatest metal records of

The hottest girl in the room isn't always the nicest…in fact, that's rarely the case. However, She's Out of My League may very well smash that notion. The film's main character Molly—played perfectly by the lovely, charming and brilliant Alice Eve—is equally gorgeous, smart, compassionate and

"I'm in New York, and I'm looking out the window at the spectacularly beautiful Central Park. It's absolutely fantastic covered in snow. It'd be fun if I brought the proper clothes," laughs Green Zone star Jason Isaacs. "My sneakers and shorts aren't going to make it!" Or Jason could've just suited

Tonight, Hollywoods biggest stars will walk the red carpet into the Kodak Theater for the Academy Awards ceremony.

In anticipation of the glamorous Oscar night, we enter the dark side of the movie business to find out which of the 10 nominees in the Best Picture category gets the vote from BitTorrent users. NewTeeVee asked us to rank the nominees by number of downloads and the results are finally in.

If every download on BitTorrent counted as a vote, District 9 would be crowned the winner, closely followed by Avatar. The least popular films according to the BitTorrent public are The Blind Side with 1,845,000 downloads and An Education with ‘only’ 683,000 downloads.

We have to note that comparing the downloads of each of the nominees is not really fair since some films have been available online for more than a year already, while others only leaked a few weeks ago. Avatar, which is second in the list with 11,326,000 downloads, became available in DVD-quality a month ago, while District 9 was already widely available last September.

As usual, all the nominated films are available online in various formats. For District 9 2,948 unique torrent files were counted, but the majority of these are inactive or have very few downloaders. Avatar beats District 9 in terms of availability with 4,280 torrent files.

The data for this list is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all the large BitTorrent trackers. All release formats, including cammed versions, are counted. Afterwards, the data was carefully checked and possible inaccuracies were systematically corrected.

Most Downloaded Oscar Nominees, 2010

rank	movie	downloads
torrentfreak.com
1	District 9	12,639,000
2	Avatar	11,326,000
3	The Hurt Locker	7,930,000
4	Up	5,437,000
5	Inglourious Basterds	5,376,000
6	Precious	4,922,000
7	Up In The Air	4,855,000
8	A Serious Man	3,836,000
9	The Blind Side	1,845,000
10	An Education	683,000

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

Last month it became apparent that investigations by music industry group IFPI were leading to raids against file-sharers conducted by the Swedish police. All of those arrested were allegedly identified as major file-sharers due to their use of Direct Connect.

With millions of individuals using BitTorrent and a relative handful using Direct Connect (DC), many wondered why this smaller group were considered worth of police attention. The answer was simple – gathering evidence of mass infringement to be used against those using BitTorrent is a hugely complicated task compared to Direct Connect.

“They can try to download the movie and see a list of people who have the movie. But they can not get a list of everything you download,” explained uTorrent creator Ludvig Strigeus recently. “It is difficult to attack a specific person.”

In common with DC but on a much bigger scale, BitTorrent is not just one network – every single swarm is a new and separate network and the task of monitoring them all is massive.

“There is a huge apparatus needed to keep track on all torrents. I think it’s too hard to manage to do it and then get [the evidence] to hold in the District Court,” adds Strigeus.

Not to say that Sweden and its fledgling anti-piracy taskforce haven’t been busy, though. They just haven’t been getting that many results.

According to a report, in the last 18 months they have reported between 70 and 80 file-sharers to the police. Of those, just 35 to 40 cases were considered worth pursuing. Around 10 of those individuals have been arrested thus far, only 3 have admitted to offenses and agreed to pay fines and there are just 15 cases still under investigated. Needless to say, this is not considered good progress for the time and money invested. Additionally, none of them were BitTorrent users.

While investigators insist that they are looking into new ways of tracking and logging evidence against BitTorrent infringers, anti-piracy group Antipiratbyran (APB) are hoping that the law will help their battle.

APB lawyer Henrik Pontén says the difficulties posed by BitTorrent “…shows the need for other types of intervention from the legislators, if they are serious about copyright law to work on the Internet.”

Pontén is hoping that changes to legislation will allow collecting societies and outfits like the IFPI to start sending copyright infringement warnings directly to those they suspect are sharing files illegally.

“The simplest option is that the victims of copyright crimes are able to send warning letters,” says Pontén.

Currently this is a problem in Sweden, since it is very difficult to obtain the real identity of someone behind an IP address without the assistance of the police. Because of this, Pontén hopes that his group can cooperate with ISPs so that they can forward infringement warnings to file-sharers on their behalf.

“We will not get [the file-sharer's] identity, we just want the warning message to arrive at the correct address. An independent body should be able to send information to the person breaking the law, possibly a government body or a third party organization,” he concludes.

Although this would be a first step, with no sanctions should the warnings be ignored it’s difficult to see how this system would have ‘teeth’. But it’s probably one step at a time for APB – teeth will be bared at a later stage.

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

Since 2005 the SXSW music festival has published thousands of free tracks from participating artists. For some of the previous editions, SXSW itself has offered torrents for the artist showcases, but since 2008 this task has been delegated to the public.

Since all of the MP3s are available for download on the festival’s site, it only takes one person to get a torrent up and running.

In 2008 it was Greg Hewgill who took the time and effort to put all the MP3s into one big torrent, and for the 2009 and 2010 editions Ben Stolt has done the same. Torrents of the previous editions have been a huge success and were downloaded more than 100,000 times.

All the tracks have been made available by the artists themselves which means that they are totally RIAA-safe. The first release of the 2010 SXSW edition contains 646 tracks totaling 3.35 GB. A second batch with another 200+ tracks is expected to be released in the near future (edit: it was released a few hours ago).

The torrents include tracks from upcoming as well as established artists in nearly all music genres one can think of. If you’re in for a musical journey at no expense it is absolutely a recommended download.

This year’s SXSW music festival takes place between March 17-21 in Austin Texas. All the tracks released for the previous editions are also still available for those people who want to fill up their iPod without having to invest tens of thousands of dollars.

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