File Sharing // Current

Harvard Lawyer Hits Back at RIAA

The guy who inspired "A Civil Action" is taking up the cause of kicking back against the RIAA and their strong arm... more

alicynx
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Democratic win could herald net neutrality

The Bush administration has taken a dim view of Internet regulations in the form of Net neutrality rules, warning last year that... more

islek
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Pensioners accused and fined,for illegal download

Despite never having played a computer game in their long lives, pensioners Gill and Ken Murdoch were targeted, threatened and... more

Beta_Boy
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Stanford University embraces BitTorrent

Stanford University is one of the few establishments in the US to promote the use of the BitTorrent filesharing protocol, using it... more

mischabarrett
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Lime Wire Seeks Legitimacy

Recently, Nat Hays, chairman of Brooklyn's independent +1 Records, wanted to break a record by one of his label's new... more

Apocalipstick
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Lime Wire casts itself as legitimate face of file-sharing

The last survivor of the large peer-to-peer music file sharing providers Lime Wire is turning its back on pirate culture. ... more

mischabarrett
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‘Heroes’ Causes BitTorrent Boom

Two fresh episodes of the US hit series ‘Heroes’ were released Monday night. In the day that followed each episode was... more

Sons_Of_Liberty
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European Parliament Says No to Three-Strikes Law

The European Parliament has voted in favor of an amendment that will prevent member states from implementing three-stikes laws. Disconnecting alleged file-sharers based on evidence from anti-piracy lobby groups restricts the rights and freedoms of Internet users, according to the amendment.

The power of anti-piracy lobbyists has grown significantly across Europe this year. In the UK, six major ISPs are working together with the music industry to start mass warning file-sharers. France has gone even further, and proposed a law that will enable the entertainment industry to disconnect alleged pirates on their third warning.

Both the MPAA and RIAA have pushed other countries to adopt similar legislation as well, but it will be hard for them to succeed in Europe. In April, the European Parliament spoke out against these anti-piracy measures, by saying it would be “conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness”. Yesterday, this statement was backed up by an official vote.

The amendment, drafted by Guy Bono and other members of the European Parliament, was adopted by an overwhelming majority. 573 parliament members voted in favor while only 74 rejected. Satisfied with this outcome, Bono stated in a response to the vote: “You do not play with individual freedoms like that,” and said that the French government should review its three-strikes law.”

The vote was welcomed in other member states as well. Swedish EU parliamentarian Christofer Fjellner said in a comment: “What’s important about this decision is that now it’s clear that you can’t force [internet service] providers to ban people from the Internet without a legal process.”

It is scary to see how lobby groups are awarded powers that should only belong to law-enforcement agencies. Evidence should never be collectedly by parties who gather it in their own interests, and it is a relief to see that the European Parliament agrees on this.The European Parliament has voted in favor of an amendment that will prevent member states from implementing three-stikes laws.... more

Sons_Of_Liberty
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1 month ago

Pirate Bay Wins Court Case, Italian Block Lifted

The Pirate Bay has successfully appealed the decision of an Italian judge who had ordered ISPs to block access to the popular BitTorrent tracker last month. The Court of Bergamo decided that this block was unlawful, and that Italian users should regain access to the site.

This August, out of nowhere, The Pirate Bay was “censored” in Italy following a decree from a public prosecutor. The block didn’t prove to be particularly effective, as traffic from Italy only increased. Nevertheless, The Pirate Bay was determined to reverse the decision, and in that mission they have succeeded.

The Court of Bergamo has now lifted the block, and ISPs are again allowed to grant their users access to the most frequently used BitTorrent tracker on the Internet. More details on the decision, and the reason why the block was reversed, will be made public later.

In a previous interview, Pirate Bay’s lawyers Giovanni Battista Gallus and Francesco Micozzi described the order as “‘original’ or ‘creative’ at best,” and said it should not have been ordered in the first place because of the lack of jurisdiction. In addition, they argued that The Pirate Bay is not breaking any laws since it’s not distributing copyright infringing material.

The court’s decision might set an important precedent for BitTorrent sites in Italy, especially for Colombo-BT, the largest Italian torrent site, which was shut down by the same prosecutor responsible for the Pirate Bay block. The action against Colombo-BT was orchestrated by the anti-piracy outlet IFPI, which also hijacked all Italian Pirate Bay visitors following the block.

Visitors who were blocked from The Pirate Bay were redirected to an IFPI server, instead of a server operated by the Italian government. This is again an example of how lobby groups such as the IFPI, MPAA and RIAA are treated as government institutions. Since many Pirate Bay visitors claimed their privacy was violated, the Italian Pirate Party and Altroconsumo filed a complaint with the ombudsman earlier this week.
The Pirate Bay has successfully appealed the decision of an Italian judge who had ordered ISPs to block access to the popular... more

Sons_Of_Liberty
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1 month ago

Trovare tutti i torrent più nascosti oggi si può

E’ inutile abbassare lo sguardo. Siamo in piena epoca internettiana dove la parola d’ordine è: condividere.... more

merlinox
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2 responses

1 month ago

Timbuktu, one of Swedens most famous artists, releases via ThePirateBay, legally.

Timbuktu is one of Swedens most famous artists - and we'd also like to say one of the smartest. Today we proudly release... more

Sons_Of_Liberty
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2 months ago

Mininova Breaks Download Records, Thanks To Heroes New Season And The Likes....

Mininova, the most visited BitTorrent site, broke two download records today. Since its inception, the site has served 6 billion torrent downloads and today reached an all time record of more than 10 million downloads served in a single day. Has today been BitTorrent’s busiest day ever?

The BitTorrent popularity explosion is still underway, and it’s picking up speed with the start of the new TV-season. Several BitTorrent sites are now amongst the most visited sites anywhere on the web, and Mininova is believed to be the largest.

We’ve been reporting on Mininova’s download figures for a while now. In June 2007 Mininova saw its 2 billionth download. This figure has since tripled to 6 billion - an impressive figure for a site that has been around for less than four years.

Over the past months, the downloads have been growing steadily, and today, another record was broken. Over 10 million torrents were downloaded in a single day - 117.6 per second - a rate never achieved before. With many TV-shows debuting today, this has been the busiest day ever on Mininova, and probably on other BitTorrent sites as well.

While the movie and music studios are complaining loudly, TV-shows are getting the most downloads on BitTorrent. On average, half of all the BitTorrent downloads at any given point in time are TV-episodes. The availability of free-streams seems to bring this figure down a little, but only in the US.

Meanwhile, the Mininova team is focusing more on premium publishers. Last year the site launched a content distribution platform where publishers can offer their content to the millions of Mininova visitors without any charge. Mininova users can download these premium files at high speeds, and they even have the option to stream music and video.

Perhaps it’s a good idea if some of the TV publishers go talk to the Mininova team, and get an account there. We’re sure that they are welcome at their new office.
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Remember too, some producers love to have torrent on their side, including Heroes....which was for most of the hub-ub or downloads.

An old article on how they agree :)
http://torrentfreak.com/heroes-producer-recognizes-benefits-of-bittorrent-080702/
Mininova, the most visited BitTorrent site, broke two download records today. Since its inception, the site has served 6 billion... more

Sons_Of_Liberty
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2 months ago

File Sharing Lawsuits at a Crossroads, After 5 Years of RIAA Litigation

It was five years ago Monday the Recording Industry Association of America began its massive litigation campaign that now includes... more

lecoke
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3 months ago

Keep Streaming Videos, the Tubes Are Fine: Report Finds

Pay no attention to rumors that the internet is getting full: the internet can eat 50 eggs.

In fact, over the last 12 months, international net bandwidth in backbone grew 62 percent, while internet traffic grew only 53 percent and filled only 43 percent of the tubes' capacity at peak times, according to a new report released by bandwidth-monitoring firm TeleGeography.

In short, the internet's tubes are growing faster than even YouTube videos can fill them, and they're in no danger of filling up anytime soon.

That's despite the occasional Chicken Little proclamation from ISPs, pending caps on 'unlimited' internet usage and hand-wringing over peer-to-peer file sharing of movies such as Cool Hand Luke.

In the same time period -- mid-2007 to mid-2008, Latin America and South Asia both doubled the capacity of their backbones -- the net's fiber-optic equivalent of a highway system.

Wholesale prices for sending and receiving data continue to fall, and with the cheapest prices in North America and Europe, where there's still more abundant capacity, the Global Internet Geography report found.

Though the report does not mention it, the expansion of global capacity -- especially fiber-optic lines that don't hit U.S. shores -- makes it harder for the U.S. government to wiretap the net, since increasingly net traffic stays local or takes a short route that doesn't go through the U.S.

But take all of the above with a pinch of salt, since the report isn't science.

Data on the net's size, capacity and even links are difficult to come by, since almost all of the infrastructure is privately owned, and there's little incentive and few requirements to share data with governments or scientists.

Without open internet data or even data about the data, there is no science.

Telegeography says it gathers its data at internet exchange points around the globe and from surveys. As for the future, the company says to expect much of the same: "strong growth and falling prices."

The full report will run you $5,000, but Telegeography offers the executive summary (.pdf) for free (http://www.telegeography.com/products/gig/samples08/gig.zip) .Pay no attention to rumors that the internet is getting full: the internet can eat 50 eggs. In fact, over the last 12 months,... more

goldenways
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3 months ago

FBI Arrests Alleged California Music Pirate

There's been a lot of debate on Threat Level recently about what's a federal crime and what is not when it comes to file... more

goldenways
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0 responses

3 months ago

Biden Is No Friend to File Sharing, Net Neutrality Protection or Online Privacy

CNet's Declan McCullagh wrote up an informative history of Joe Biden's tech-related voting record--if Biden's name... more

Owwmykneecap
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5 responses

3 months ago

Comcast Does About-Face: Declares Love for P2P

Comcast, perhaps the most aggressive opponent of file sharing after the RIAA, has seen the light. After testing P4P, an experimental file sharing architecture that reduces network costs and bandwidth usage, the company is closer to embracing file sharing on its own network.

"We are active members of [the P4P working group,] and our engineers are actively collaborating and engaging with other engineers on it. We're absolutely engaged and part of it," says Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas.

P4P, a next generation file sharing system, has garnered intense interest from ISPs -- such as AT&T, Verizon, Telefonica and Comcast -- as well as content providers. If the architecture becomes widely adopted by ISPs, it could change the face of file sharing; P4P lowers network costs for broadband providers by reducing the distance data travels on P2P applications. The upshot? File sharing won't hurt network performance. And as an added benefit, it could also increase downloading speeds for customers. The technology could be equally beneficial for content providers since it might help movie studios and music labels track legitimate media sales.

For Comcast, the adoption of P4P would be a dramatic shift in strategy. The company has made a practice of slowing down access speeds for active file sharers or so-called "bandwidth hogs." While Comcast argues that throttling is its God-given right, the FCC said otherwise -- the government agency ruled that Comcast violated federal policy when it slowed internet traffic for some subscribers.

But in July, Comcast tested the P4P protocol on its network, and saw dramatic improvements in network performance, according to Robert Levitan, CEO of Pando Networks, a content-delivery company that conducted the test for Comcast and AT&T.

In addition, the architecture increased download speeds for broadband subscribers,

The results -- though not made public yet -- "will easily blow away Verizon's results," says Levitan.

That says a lot. When Verizon tested P4P on its network in February, it saw an 80 percent decrease in the distance that P2P network traffic traveled, and the delivery speeds increased by up to 200 percent, according to Levitan. Meanwhile, a team of computer scientists are presenting those results at a conference in Seattle today.

Not only are ISPs showing the love for P4P, content providers are equally interested. The RIAA, which has made a hobby of suing little old ladies for illegal file sharing, has shown support for the technology.

Levitan says Carey Sherman, the president of the RIAA, was so impressed with the technology, he introduced Pando to several music executives. (The RIAA declined to comment.)

"The world is changing when the RIAA is introducing a P2P tech provider to music execs," says Levitan.Comcast, perhaps the most aggressive opponent of file sharing after the RIAA, has seen the light. After testing P4P, an... more

goldenways
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1 response

3 months ago

Italian TV group estimates 315,672 viewing days lost to YouTube and Google

Mediaset Seeks 500 Million Euros in Viewing Rights from YouTube and Google “Not counting advertising”. MILAN... more

SushiBandit
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0 responses

3 months ago

IOC asks Sweden to block file sharing site Pirate Bay

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has requested the Swedish government to stop notorious file sharing site The Pirate Bay... more

SushiBandit
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30 responses

3 months ago

Australian ISPs Still Rejects Idea of Becoming Copyright Police

Trying for force ISPs into becoming copyright police seems to be a hot trend for the copyright industry these days. Then again, ISPs rarely are willing to go for the idea of solving another industries problem and Australia is no exception.

There's a report from ABC Australia which highlights an ongoing issue in Australia where anti-piracy outfits and the copyright industry are trying to get ISPs to become copyright police. The Australian ISPs aren't budging on their firm "no" response.

This time, the calls to get ISPs to become copyright police comes from Australian anti-piracy outfit AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) Australians may know these demands have been going on for some time now, but the circumstances internationally have changed. In Britain, the British ISPs caved to pressure and agreed to become copyright police. Details of that deal aren't yet fully known. No doubt this has gotten AFACT to redouble their efforts to pressure ISPs to change their mind.

Unfortunately for AFACT, they are working against ISPs who are aware of what filtering technology is not capable of doing. It was only a few days ago that a local study pointed out that ISP level filtering technology does not adequately work on file-sharing protocols. The technology has been tested and retested and still comes out with the same results - they don't work.

Filtering technology, though, isn't the only option on the table, but Australian ISPs aren't exactly willing to use the other possible methods either. From the report:

Peter Coroneos from the Internet Industry Association says ISPs have a number of concerns about AFACT's proposals.

"The precedent that this creates for ISPs in other areas, and [also] the fact that disconnecting people from the internet is not - in our view - a proportionate response to copyright infringement," he said.

"ISPs, I think quite legitimately, argue that it's only when a court pronounces that an infringement has occurred that regard should be had for the complaint," [Mr Coroneos] said.

"But for someone to simply compile lists of IP addresses, fire them off to ISPs on a weekly basis and expect action to be taken on that basis is really going beyond what even the copyright law in Australia would require."

Judging by this, Australian ISPs seem satisfied of the whole idea of 'come back with a warrant, then we'll talk'. Seems like a reasonable argument that one industry shouldn't be responsible for another industries problems. Should the electric industry deal with the problems of the candle industry?

It's worth noting that the copyright industry demanding that ISPs should be the copyright police isn't unique in Australia in recent times. In the United States, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is hoping that ISPs in the US will also become copyright police. That was after British ISPs caved to pressure and France pressuring Europe to follow similar action.Trying for force ISPs into becoming copyright police seems to be a hot trend for the copyright industry these days. Then again,... more