tagged w/ Torrents
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This week, close to two million people have downloaded the Olympics opening ceremony, which makes it the most pirated TV-show of the week - again. The International Olympic Committee is not too happy about it, and they are urging the Swedish government to take on The Pirate Bay.
top gearLast week we reported that the Opening Ceremony had been downloaded by more than a million people, and this figure has doubled over the past 7 days. However, there is less demand for the other Olympic events, as most of these get less than 20,000 downloads.
Compared to 2004, the availability of Olympic events on BitTorrent has grown significantly, both in quantity and quality. Interestingly, the demand for Olympic torrents is the greatest in China, as 65% of the people who downloaded the Openings Ceremony come from the host country.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is not pleased seeing their shows on BitTorrent sites though. Yesterday they even sent a letter (read it here) to the Swedish Minister of Justice, urging her to take on The Pirate Bay. From the letter, it looks like they have been reading last week’s article. “Our technical advisor Informs us that as many as 1 million copies of the Opening Ceremony have been illegally downloaded worldwide, with the most significant activity taking place through Pirate Bay,” they write.
The IOC claims to have contacted The Pirate Bay with a takedown request, but turned to the Minister when they got no response. The Pirate Bay denies this, and Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde writes: “The phone hasn’t rung. And I guess their e-mail probably got caught in the Chinese firewall, since TPB is blocked there.”
From the letter, it seems that the IOC is predicting that the Closing Ceremony will hit BitTorrent immediately after the fireworks. “We are also gravely concerned about the upcoming Closing Ceremony on August 24, as it is entirely predictable that illegal copies of that event will be immediately made available through the Pirate Bay.” They are right of course, and we’re afraid that the Swedish government can’t do much about it either.
Today, the Minister said in a radio interview that The Pirate Bay is not really good promotion for Sweden (although some would disagree), but that there is indeed little they can do to stop the tracker from hosting torrent files.
It is not clear why the IOC is going after the Pirate Bay, and not any of the other BitTorrent sites. Of course, they are the most outspoken, but the majority of all the Olympic torrents are downloaded from other sites. Most BitTorrent sites do take down torrents when they are asked to, so it might be a good idea to start there….
Below is this week’s chart of the most pirated TV-shows on BitTorrent, the Olympics Opening Ceremony tops the chart again. The data for the TV-torrent chart is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.
Top Downloads August 10 - August 17
Ranking (last week) TV-show
1 (1) Olympics 2008 Opening Ceremony
2 (2) Weeds
3 (3) Eureka
4 (4) Generation Kill
5 (5) Burn Notice
6 (back) Stargate Atlantis
7 (new) Fifth Gear
8 (10) Mad Men
9 (6) Psych
10 (back) MythbustersThis week, close to two million people have downloaded the Olympics opening ceremony,... more
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The Pirate Bay has a new logo, at least temporarily.
The world's most notorious torrent-tracking site has temporarily renamed itself The Beijing Bay after the International Olympic Committee sought the assistance of the Swedish government to stop it from tracking clips from the ongoing Olympics in Beijing.
The IOC claimed Monday there were more than 1 million downloads of footage from the Olympics -- mostly of the opening ceremony. TorrentFreak was the first English-speaking site to report the news.
The Swedish government has already charged the Pirate Bay operators, based in Sweden, with copyright infringement. No trial date has been set.
The Pirate Bay, which tracks millions of copyrighted works available to users for free, has no intention of shutting down or of shuttering its Olympic trackers.The Pirate Bay has a new logo, at least temporarily.
The world's most... more
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U2 manager Paul McGuinness, who wants file-sharers to be disconnected from the Internet, has something else to complain about today. Four songs from U2’s upcoming album ‘No Line On The Horizon’ have been leaked online after Bono played them too loudly on his stereo - and a fan recorded them.U2 manager Paul McGuinness, who wants file-sharers to be disconnected from the... more
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MPAA argues that e-mails it obtained for its case were technically not "intercepted" in violation of federal wiretapping law since the hacked server from which they were sent stored them for several milliseconds before transmission.
Though TorrentSpy, once one of the more popular BitTorrent tracker sites around, is long gone, the case still reverberates throughout the online community for it may have disastrous implications for online privacy as we know it.
If you recall, back in 2005 a hacker broke into TorrentSpy's server and configured it to copy and forward all incoming and outgoing email to his personal account which he later sold to the MPAA for $15,000 USD for use in building its copyright infringement case against the site.
When the e-mails were presented in court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper ruled that they had not been intercepted in violation of the 1968 Wiretap Act because because the e-mails were stored on the mail server for several milliseconds during transmission, they were not technically "intercepted."
"Anderson did not stop or seize any of the messages that were forwarded to him," wrote Judge Cooper in her decision. "Anderson's actions did not halt the transmission of the messages to their intended recipients. As such, under well-settled case law, as well as a reading of the statute and the ordinary meaning of the word 'intercept,' Anderson's acquisitions of the e-mails did not violate the Wiretap Act."
However, many have pointed out that the ruling has severe implications for online privacy for it means that so long as you have access to any server that handles an e-mail as it flows across the internet it's technically not being "intercepted." Government go thus simply circumvent wiretapping laws by routing e-mails through its servers.
"It could really gut the wiretapping laws," said Orin S. Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and expert on surveillance law. "The government could go to your Internet service provider and say, 'Copy all of your e-mail, but make the copy a millisecond after the email arrives,' and it would not be a wiretap."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed an amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief pointing out that the "ruling is incorrect as a matter of law and must be overturned in order to prevent the government from engaging in similar surveillance without a court order."
From the brief:
Most worrisome is that under the district court’s holding, law enforcement officers could engage in the contemporaneous acquisition of emails just as Anderson did, without having to comply with the Wiretap Act’s requirements. For example, if the FBI installed a network wiretapping device at a point where electronic communications are stored for milliseconds before continuing to their destination, the Bureau would not have to obtain an intercept order under the Wiretap Act, but could instead proceed under the SCA’s less stringent requirements, even though such surveillance represents “a series [of intrusions] or a continuous surveillance”
388 U.S. at 57.
Once again we have a case involving illegal file-sharing that is about much, much, more. It's not about copyright infringement, but rather about the rule of law and the lengths to which copyright holders are allowed to go in order to target suspected file-sharers. Just as we would never allow the govt to invade our homes and our privacy without first legally acquiring the necessary warrants to obtain evidence, so too must we never allow private business interests to do the same. MPAA argues that e-mails it obtained for its case were technically not... more
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Criticizes the MPAA for following in the RIAA's footsteps and targeting file-sharing customers instead of "investing in a positive message" like "the fun of going to the movies."
Outspoken billionaire "maverick" entrepreneur and Chairman of HDNet Mark Cuban has written a post on his blog extolling his opinion that "promotion works better than prevention" as the MPAA targets potential customers in its battle against illegal file-sharing and unauthorized distribution.
"The MPAA is staring right in the face of a paradox and they must make a choice," he writes. "They can continue to invest in the war on Digital Piracy (as opposed to physical DVD piracy, which can be monitored and slowed by confiscating actual DVDs and duplication equipment), or they can invest in promoting the fun of going to the movies."
Cuban points out the fallacy in waging a neverending war against digital piracy like the RIAA and essentially making enemies out the very people it's trying to woo into theaters and to buy DVDs and other merchandise. He suggests that the MPAA instead "Invest in a positive message that can get people more excited about their member products and the unique experience offered in theaters" and stop sending the message that its customers are "crooks and pirates."
He has over 1 billion USD invested in the entertainment industry and so knows what it's like "to see our content distributed online."
"I get a daily report of all the torrents and other files available online," he writes. "You know what I think about that ? So what. That's what I think. Its collateral damage."
"People with more time than money will steal content," Cuban adds. "They weren't going to pay for it otherwise."
How many movies have you illegally downloaded that there was no way in hell you would've gone to go seen in the theater? Now were you the one of millions of who went to go see "The Dark Knight?" I was.
The recent success of "The Dark Knight" proves that movie fans will pay to see a movie that's worth watching, especially one which is so patently fit for the big screen.
Cuban seizes this data and pleads for the MPAA to take, continuing:
"The theatrical exhibition industry just experienced a phenomenal several weeks with The Dark Knight setting record after record. People by the 10s of millions went to the theater, many multiple time to enjoy the unique experience of going to a movie. Could you please, please, please use the money you are going to spend fighting the unfightable and instead spend it on promoting the fun of going to the movies ? More people going to the movies is more people getting excited about movies. More people getting excited about movies means more people watching movies on TV, which is good for revenues, and more people buying DVDs or legal downloads of the movies. Again, good for revenues."
Exactly. If the MPAA finds itself overcome by a reflexive negative stance towards potential customers and emerging technology then it will simply make everyone unhappy with the moviegoing experience. This will undoubtedly further erode peoples' desire to patronize theaters since it means putting money in the pockets of the very people whom have made life so difficult for them.
Do yourself a favor MPAA and take heed. The RIAA's spent almost a decade and countless billions of dollars in legal fees and enforcement strategies to little if any avail. All it's managed to do with these expenditures is cause millions more in losses from irate fans who've sworn off patronizing major music labels ever again.
Technology can never be prevented, and that's why digital piracy will be marked by a neverending arms race of illegal file-sharing which the MPAA will never, ever be able to win. Criticizes the MPAA for following in the RIAA's footsteps and targeting... more
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Just imagine how much money you can now save in college? The textbooks prices are insanely huge and take alot of you money, so why pay? Well now you don't have too......yes!
After a month of downtime, TextBook Torrents makes its return, right on time, as the first semester starts in just a few weeks. The BitTorrent tracker, dedicated to sharing knowledge in the form of textbooks, was pulled offline by Dreamhost early July because the hosting company received a takedown request.
textbooktorrents The Textbook Torrents tracker is considered to be the largest library of textbooks on BitTorrent. The site had been flying under the radar for quite some time but this changed a month ago. On July 1st, The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a story on the site, which was picked up by Slashdot and later the LA Times blog.
All this attention led to thousands of new visitors to the tracker, but the publicity also had a downside. Geekman, the administrator of Textbook Torrents told TorrentFreak that their host, xlHost, and their domain registrar, Dreamhost, both received a takedown request a few days after all the press coverage. “We received a DMCA notice from Pearson Education a week or so prior, which we complied with, but it was a group of publishers that contacted our host,” he told us.
Although the tracker was pretty popular, with around 20,000 peers trading files at any given point in time, Geekman said he had never received takedown notices from big publishers before. “We had a couple of emails from individuals before, but nothing from organizations. One was an editor complaining about being cheated out of his 10¢ per copy commission.”
On July 5th Dreamhost suspended Geekman’s account, and despite his many efforts to contact them, they simply didn’t respond to his inquiries. It took more than a week before he was allowed to transfer the domain. Now, more than a month after the site went down, Textbook Torrents returns, and it’s not planning to go away anytime soon.
Geekman plans to focus on making the site’s resources redundant, to reduce vulnerability and to make sure the site remains online. In addition he will work on the legal issues and improve the privacy of the site’s users. One of the most drastic changes is the decision to stop the logging of IP-addresses, which means that the site will stop ratio tracking. Making the tracker public will ensure the privacy of the users, in case the server is compromised.
“I want to see the textbook industry change such that we are no longer needed,” Geekman says when we ask him about his main motivation to bring the site back, while mentioning cheap books and responsible business practices as examples of positive change.
He doesn’t think publishers should give away their books –even though some authors profit from doing so– but he does think most books are too expensive. “The companies may be corrupt, but they have a right to make money. They can’t be expected to give their material away for free. After all, there is a significant amount of work involved in the production of a textbook. We need a middle ground,” he says.
“I’m not naive enough to say that if something can be distributed in a digital form it should be free but there needs to be some adaptation here,” Geekman added. For now, however, all the publishers see is a threat to their revenue stream, as Allan Ryan of Harvard Business Publishing put it: “We have been fairly vigorous in monitoring these sites and in requesting that they take down our copyrighted content.”
They sure have something to monitor now, as Textbook Torrents has made its return…because you still can’t torrent beer. Currently, the site can only be accessed directly via the IP-address, however, the domain should be working again shortly.Just imagine how much money you can now save in college? The textbooks prices are... more
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While this story certainly doesn't seem to bode well for the idea of bands directly profiting from releasing their own music, it does point out that Radiohead's attempt worked well as a marketing scheme, resulting in stronger sales in other areas relating to merchandising and shows for the group.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could enjoy an artist's music for free? Seems there might be a future for it.
From the article:
"“The expectation among rights-holders is that, in order to create a success story, you must reduce the rate of piracy – we’ve found that is not the case,” said Mr Garland, chief executive of Big Champagne, who highlighted the benefits that Radiohead received from the album’s popularity, including strong ticket sales for its concerts this year."While this story certainly doesn't seem to bode well for the idea of bands... more
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Italian researchers say they can detect SSH tunnels with 99% accuracy and actual protocol (P2P, POP3, SMTP, HTTP) with 90% accuracy.
Italian Researchers at the Universita degli Studidi Brescia (University of Brescia Studies?) have developed a statistical method called "Tunnel Hunter" for detecting encrypted tunneling activities with 99% accuracy.
Using a naive Bayes approach to previously classify different protocols such as P2P, POP3, SMTP, and HTTP, they have used the same basic classification algorithm to detect SSH tunnels. Instead of using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) they analyze three simple properties of IP packets: their size, inter-arrival time and arrival order.
The main theory they argue is that that a fingerprint can be derived by training the system on legitimate, non-tunneling SSH usage, and then later be used to detect application-layer tunnels that are run on top of a Secure Shell. As shown below, researchers were able to detect encrypted P2P traffic with a 88.77% accuracy. Italian researchers say they can detect SSH tunnels with 99% accuracy and actual... more
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As the war of words over file-sharing in the UK heats up, the music industry represented by the BPI has been seeking ways to stop an estimated 6 million British citizens from sharing music. It has been pressurizing ISPs to take responsibility for the actions of their subscribers, and demanding that they disconnect those who share unauthorized music, something the ISPs don’t want to do.
To its credit, one ISP, Carphone Warehouse, has refused to comply. Others are working with the music industry and at the forefront of that group is Virgin Media.
Virgin has been receiving quite a lot of bad publicity recently after it was revealed that it agreed to work with the music industry to send out so-called ‘educational warnings‘ to its customers the BPI accuse of file-sharing. Virgin has sent out hundreds of these at the behest of the music industry and they have been dropping through mail boxes up and down the country. The letters come in an envelope and printed on the outside are the words: “Important: If you don’t read this, your broadband could be disconnected” so recipients could be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that, frankly, if they don’t read it, their broadband could be disconnected.
However, Virgin Media told has told Jim over at Newsbeat that the printing on the envelope was “a mistake” and there is “absolutely no possibility” of legal action or disconnection for any recipient of these letters. Nice to know.
Furthermore, Asam Ahmad from Virgin notes that they cannot be 100% sure that the person they send the letters to has actually committed any offense at all. “It is important to let our customers know that their accounts have been used in a certain way but we are happy to accept it may not be the account holder that’s involved.”
He goes on to highlight the problematic issue of incorrectly accusing someone due to a lack of solid evidence: “It could be someone else in the family or someone living in a shared house. It could even be someone stealing wi-fi. We are not making any form of accusation.”
Virgin Media has also stated that it will not hand over the personal details of anyone accused by the BPI “under any circumstances”. This is a good start by Virgin and all credit to them for taking this stance but the reality is that Virgin hands over its subscriber’s details in the blink of an eye when faced with a court order to do so. We know for a fact that they hand over the details of petty file-sharers to the likes of lawyers Davenport Lyons for the alleged sharing of one cheap game costing little more than a single album. However, the BPI has said in the past that it doesn’t want to start taking legal action against individuals.As the war of words over file-sharing in the UK heats up, the music industry... more
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A great primer on the general network policy towards P2P sharing as well as the general idea of using torrents. Includes the role of ISPs (Internet Service Providers, aka, the "distributors") in this whole hubbub. This is a feature/interview with Rick Cotton, NBC Universal's "Chief Digital Officer."A great primer on the general network policy towards P2P sharing as well as the... more
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The Bush administration has taken a dim view of Internet regulations in the form of Net neutrality rules, warning last year that they could "inefficiently skew investment, delay innovation, and diminish consumer welfare, and there is reason to believe that the kinds of broad marketplace restrictions proposed in the name of 'neutrality' would do just that, with respect to the Internet." A report from the Federal Trade Commission last year reached the same no-new-laws-needed conclusion.
Don't be surprised if the situation changes under the Obama administration. President-elect Barack Obama told CNET News during the campaign that "I will take a backseat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality."
(Full article at link)The Bush administration has taken a dim view of Internet regulations in the form of... more
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