tagged w/ TorrentFreak
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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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If you can’t beat pirates, join them. This is Playlouder’s philosophy, a music download service that allows subscribers to download music from BitTorrent and other filesharing networks, while reimbursing the copyright owners. The concept sure is interesting, but the current setup is naive, flawed and doomed to fail.
Reports about the new and upcoming legal P2P service “Playlouder” are all over the news - again. Just like three years ago, Playlouder co-founder Paul Sanders manages to generate buzz for his legalized filesharing service. “We are confident that we will have something quite good to announce in the next couple of months,” he said, claiming that his company made a deal with one of the top ISPs in the UK.
The idea is simple; Playlouder plans to offer subscribers of one of the larger ISPs in the UK a service that will allow them to pirate as much music as they want, for a flat fee. Customers will be allowed to use the BitTorrent sites and filesharing applications they are used to. Through Deep Packet Inspection, Playlouder will check what tracks you download, so they can pay the rights holder accordingly.
The idea of creating a service where users can use BitTorrent sites without having to worry about legal repercussions is interesting. However, despite 5 years of development, the Playlouder team is overlooking some of the most basic features of file-sharing, which will render the service useless. Playlouder will allow its subscribers to download content from BitTorrent, but they won’t allow them to share the files with others who do not use the service. This restriction is needed because they want to prevent copyright infringement, but it causes a few problems too.
Thou shalt share
The number one rule for BitTorrent users is: Share. If you don’t share - upload files to others - your download speeds will reduce dramatically. This means that it could take hours instead of minutes to download an album from your favorite BitTorrent site. What Playlouder will offer is a highly degraded version of BitTorrent, and subscribers will not be able to get the great download speeds they are so accustomed to.
BitTorrent Abusers
Torrent sites are not too fond of people who aim to abuse the system. It wouldn’t surprise me if most trackers ban Playlouder customers from accessing the service, as they will seriously hurt the download speed of the swarm, and thus the average downloader. What they’re technically offering is a Freeleech service, one which doesn’t share back to the community. Together with the decreased download speeds, this means that Playlouder users will not get to enjoy the BitTorrent experience that everyone else gets. In fact, it will be almost impossible for them to download anything from BitTorrent.
Encryption
Another issue, not so much related to the user experience, is that Playlouder will not be able to track what people are downloading when they enable protocol header encryption. A significant number of BitTorrent users are using encryption to prevent ISPs from throttling their traffic, but since encryption obfuscates the protocol headers, Playlouder can’t track what their users are downloading. This then means that artists and labels will not be fully compensated for the tracks these users download.
Let us be clear, we do encourage the search for new business models here at TorrentFreak, where ideally, both artists and consumers benefit. However, in its current form the Playlouder service is not going to be a great success, if it is more than just another “vaporshare” service in the first place.
If you can’t beat pirates, join them. This is Playlouder’s philosophy,... more
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Last Friday, Italian ISPs started to prevent their customers from accessing the Pirate Bay. Strangely enough, Pirate Bay traffic is not redirected to Italian authorities, but to the IFPI, the infamous anti-piracy lobby of the music industry. Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde is not happy, and says it’s a scandal.
the pirate bayFor now, potential Italian Pirate Bay users are denied access to the BitTorrent tracker, and Italian authorities are investigating whether the site should be blocked indefinitely. The block totally missed its purpose though, as The Pirate Bay saw an increase in traffic from Italy instead of a decline.
The Pirate Bay has already taken several countermeasures to make sure Italians can access the site. These don’t work across all ISPs yet, and those users are redirected to the following page by their ISP. Interestingly, this page is hosted on a server that belongs to IFPI - a reverse IP lookup shows that the page is linked to www.pro-music.org, IFPI’s legal music site.
“I think it’s a scandal,” Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak in response to this remarkable finding. “I hope that people start noticing that IFPI gets more and more into bed with the police. It’s really disturbing that one side of an ongoing fight gets more authority without a legal basis.”
Peter finds it hard to believe that the IFPI now gets all the traffic destined for the Pirate Bay, without any legal grounds, and he urges Italian users to clear their cookies before the IFPI decides to steal them. We have to agree with Peter here, it is indeed very disturbing that the traffic is redirected to a site which belongs to an anti-piracy lobby, instead of diverting neutrally to the ISP or local authorities.
The IFPI was contacted for a response several days ago, but hasn’t replied so far. It’s not the first time that they’ve “hijacked” traffic from a torrent site. Last October they did the same thing with the OiNK domain. That instance was even worse, as they used the opportunity to threaten members of the BitTorrent tracker, in advance of any trial.
Last October, the IFPI lost their .com domain, which was mysteriously transferred to the Pirate Bay, who started International Federation of Pirate Interests. Even though the IFPI managed to get the domain back in their possession, the incident marked an increase in efforts from the organization to take out The Pirate Bay.
Thus far, only John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of the IFPI, has responded to the Italian move against The Pirate Bay stating: “This decision sends out a clear message that The Pirate Bay’s activities are illegal under Italian law. The Pirate Bay facilitates the mass infringement of copyright across music, film, television and games. Its very name shows the contempt its operators hold for the creators of legitimate content.”
Italy is trying hard to get rid of their fascist label, and some Italians were quite upset about the Pirate Bay calling their country a fascist state, but scandals like this don’t help to improve this image. Things get even worse if you take into account that the IFPI covered up the fact that the organization was founded in Rome, Italy, under the watch of Mussolini, one of the greatest fascist dictators. Enough said.Last Friday, Italian ISPs started to prevent their customers from accessing the Pirate... more
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It has been something of a David and Goliath battle, but the first skirmishes in the war on file sharing are over. While the RIAA jubilantly claimed success last year, it is another case that has has now silenced the RIAA, as it avoids drawing attention to the case it never had.
riaaIf you read a mainstream media news report about file sharing or talk to a reporter about (illicit) filesharing, you would think that the only case involving the RIAA was Capitol V Thomas, a case that made news nationwide for the size of the fines. However, there are a number of cases going on around the country, cases where the RIAA did not win.
One of the most under-reported is Atlantic V Anderson, which has taken over 3 years from start to finish. The RIAA eventually dropped it with prejudice, meaning they accept the fault was theirs in this case. A similar thing happened in the case against another alleged filesharer, Foster, but both cases were relatively under-reported in mainstream media.
Copyright law, like most other aspects of civil law, allows for the prevailing party to recoup legal fees and costs incurred in the case. This is exactly what Foster and Anderson did, with success. The Foster case was awarded over $68,000 in attorney fees and costs. Likewise, the Anderson case was awarded fees and costs but of a substantially greater amount; $107,834 to be precise, in an order dated July 28th 2008.
It is encouraging to finally hear that last night, the RIAA and the member companies that were involved in the case finally paid the fees (they refused first), putting an end to this protracted legal wrangling. The amount paid was not, however, $107,834 but a figure of $107,951 – a figure which takes into account interest accrued due to delay.
It should be noted that while this is the end of Atlantic V Anderson, it is not the end of Anderson V Atlantic, the case where Ms Anderson is taking her former accusers to task over their practices in this field. It is a heartening victory, and one that is spurring the tide.
So, with Thomas looking to head to a mistrial, making the $222,000 judgment null and void, the two largest decisions in the RIAA’s ‘war on downloading’ have been against them. In both cases the RIAA admitted it was wrong, and ordered to pay the fees.
Thanks to Recording Industry Vs PeopleIt has been something of a David and Goliath battle, but the first skirmishes in the... more
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Electronic Arts, the publisher of the upcoming massively multiplayer online role-playing game Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, has chosen BitTorrent for the distribution of the closed Beta client. Included in the documentation is a recommendation to use a TorrentFreak ’speed up’ guide.
warhammerDeveloped by Mythic Entertainment, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is a long-awaited WoW competitor, due for general release on September 18th this year. As with many games of this type, the developer is beta testing the software, helped by players in the US, Europe, New Zealand and Australia.
To become a tester in the beta, many people were selected via applications, contests and prize draws. The first stage of testing was over in the final quarter of 2007 and during February 2008, invites to test were sent out to lucky recipients. July this year saw the activation of so-called ‘Guild beta’ keys which signaled the start of the next stage of testing and on August 10th, keys were sent out for Beta 3.
The Warhammer Online beta gaming client is quite a size, weighing in at over 9.3GB. Providing a download of this size for testers could turn into a needlessly expensive exercise for the publisher, Electronic Arts, and the developer, Mythic, so they have made the decision to utilize BitTorrent instead, dramatically reducing distribution costs.
There is no other way to download the client, indicating that EA/Mythic are completely confident that their target market will have no trouble using torrents but just in case, they provide a comprehensive BitTorrent guide which covers basics like client selection, up to more advanced techniques such as port forwarding. An eagle-eyed reader who is involved in the beta testing pointed out that the guide also includes advice to follow a TorrentFreak guide to speed up transfers.
The Mythic tracker is located at http://torrent2.eamythic.com and currently reports around 1300 seeds and over 7000 leechers. A search on the hash value of the torrent, reveals the beta is (unsurprisingly) being tracked by other torrent sites too.
The Warhammer Beta team was contacted for a response, but hasn’t responded before publication.Electronic Arts, the publisher of the upcoming massively multiplayer online... more
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The opening ceremony of the 2008 summer Olympics, co-directed by Zhang Yimou, was a truly spectacular event. Not everyone had the chance to watch it live, but that’s where BitTorrent comes in. The broadcast of the Olympics opening ceremony has been downloaded more than a million times already, and the download counters go up every day.
top gearThe most popular version of the opening ceremony is the HD release, a massive 5GB file. At the time of publication more than 60,000 people are downloading the torrent, while over a million people have already downloaded the opening ceremony via BitTorrent - even though it was free to watch on TV all around the world.
Other releases of the Olympics ceremony are popular as well, such as an iPod ready version of the first hour, a standard definition release of the opening ceremony, and a high definition capture of the torch lighting and fireworks. Three Olympic shows would have made it into our weekly TV-download chart, but we decided to count them as one.The opening ceremony of the 2008 summer Olympics, co-directed by Zhang Yimou, was a... more
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A vulnerability described as ‘critical’ has been discovered in versions of uTorrent and the official BitTorrent client. The ‘buffer overflow’ vulnerability can be exploited to compromise a user’s computer for the execution of arbitrary code. It is suggested that users should immediately update to uTorrent version 1.8 RC7 or higher. There is currently no fix for the official client.
utorrentSecunia has issued two urgent security alerts, one for uTorrent and the other for the mainline BitTorrent client. Both clients are being developed by BitTorrent Inc.
The vulnerability was found in uTorrent and can be maliciously exploited to compromise a user’s computer, however, it also affects the mainline BitTorrent client, since it’s based on the uTorrent code.
According to Secunia, “the vulnerability is caused due to a boundary error in the processing of .torrent files. This can be exploited to cause a stack-based buffer overflow by tricking the user into opening a .torrent file containing an overly long ‘created by’ field”.
A successful execution of the exploit would allow the attacker to run arbitrary code on the victim’s machine.
The vulnerability exists in uTorrent version 1.7.7 (Build 8179) and may well affect earlier versions too, although this isn’t yet confirmed. The flaw is also present in the official BitTorrent client, versions 6.xx.
The solution for uTorrent users is to immediately upgrade to version 1.8. Currently there is no solution for those using the mainline client. However, an update will be available soon, TorrentFreak was told. For now, caution is advised when using unverified torrents.
http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=44003A vulnerability described as ‘critical’ has been discovered in versions of... more
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The Pirate Bay has been “censored” in Italy following an urgent decree from a deputy public prosecutor. Pirate Bay’s IPs and the domain name are inaccessible, as they are blocked by ISPs all over the country. Whether these blocks will be very effective, however, is doubtful, since The Pirate Bay has already announced several countermeasures.
pirate bayAn insider working at an Internet provider in Italy told TorrentFreak that all the relevant large access ISPs in Italy have complied with the request to block the popular BitTorrent tracker, which was sent out yesterday.
Italy is taking a stand against BitTorrent sites, so it seems. Two weeks ago, the largest Italian torrent site, Columbo-BT, was shut down by the same prosecutor who is responsible for the Pirate Bay block. IFPI, the infamous anti-piracy organization assisted the prosecutor, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if they assisted in this case as well, considering their history with The Pirate Bay.
In a response to the news, Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunder told TorrentFreak that they have already implemented countermeasures to make sure all Italians will be able to access their site. “We’re working on setting up a really annoying system for them to filter,” he said. “Some of the ISPs decided to nullroute - so we changed IP so it works for them now some other decided to block the domain name so we added labaia.org, which means “the bay” in Italian.”
As usual, the popular BitTorrent tracker is not going down without a fight, and The Pirate Bay team is determined to keep the site accessible to all Italians. They will also contact the prosecutor, and they invite Italian lawyers who know how to counter this legally, to contact them.
“We’re quite used to fascist countries not allowing freedom of speech. A lot of smaller nations that have dictators decide to block our site since we can help spread information that could be harmful to the dictators,” Sunde wrote in a blog entry.
This is not the first time that ISPs were forced to block access to The Pirate Bay. In February, a Danish court ordered the ISP “Tele2″ to block its customers from accessing the site. The decision, which is currently under appeal, once again heated the debate on ISPs Internet filtering.
This Danish court case was initiated by the IFPI, that later tried to use the “landmark decision” to force Swedish ISPs to do the same, but failed. In fact, it seems that filtering traffic to The Pirate Bay is actually illegal according to European law, and it is highly doubtful that the block in Italy is lawful.
Sunde has his suspicions about the reason for the block, he told us: “It’s quite funny that the country Italy is run by the biggest media mogul of them all. we’re his competitors.” Whether or not Berlusconi was personally involved, blocking The Pirate Bay is doomed to fail, and will only strengthen the popularity of the site in Italy.
developing story… updates soon.The Pirate Bay has been “censored” in Italy following an urgent decree... more
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