Author: Ernesto

Over the last years we’ve seen dozens of piracy surveys. Thousands of news outlets and blogs generally cover the results, which turned the subject into a cheap and effective way of spamming unrelated services.

This week, another insignificant survey was published, claiming that 82% of all Brits download illegally. However, what really caught our eye in the reports was the following.

“Mark Pearson, managing director of the MyVoucherCodes.co.uk website that commissioned the survey said [blabla]“

Really? Why would a coupon site commission a study on piracy?

The answer is not that hard. In only costs a few hundred bucks to do the survey and there could be hundreds of sites that pick it up, generating a lot of Google link juice. It’s a cheap method to get a spammy service advertised on high profile sites and it certainly beats the cost of real advertising.

Sad but true.

Article from: FreakBits

Over the last few years we have criticized the major music labels for their lack of innovation and their inability to adapt their business models to the digital era. Sometimes, however, we have side with a label instead of the artist.

We have been getting quite a few emails about the EMI vs. Pink Floyd rift this week. The band and the label have a dispute over the royalty payments of the music that’s sold though online shops, with Pink Floyd arguing that EMI can’t sell single tracks from the band’s albums.

The comments on most of the reports on this issue have been extremely negative towards the label. “Go for these capitalist pigs throats Pink,” and “EMI and other labels deserve to be bankrupt,” to name a few.

Although we have been very aware of the copyright abuse of some of the major labels and the unfair treatment of some artists, we have to root for EMI in this battle.

Before the MP3 era many people complained bitterly about having to buy a full album if they were only interested in a few songs. Today, people have the choice to pick only the songs they like, but not it is was up to Pink Floyd.

It seems to us that it’s not the greed of the labels but the greed of Pink Floyd that is at the root of this dispute. If the band was so worried about the label “breaking” the album they should have never put out a single either, or allowed single tracks to be played on the radio.

If Pink Floyd would win we might be thrown back in time, being forced to buy full albums, that’s not at all in the interest of the consumer. So, we stand behind a major label for once.

Go EMI.

Update: too late

Article from: FreakBits

In 2004 the MPAA launched its infamous “You wouldn’t steal…” campaign. The clip was put on millions of retail DVDs and viewers were watch it before they could enjoy the actual content.

The message of the anti-piracy ad was pretty straightforward and the full text goes as follows.

“You wouldn’t steal a car. You wouldn’t steal a handbag. You wouldn’t steal a mobile phone. You wouldn’t steal a DVD. Downloading pirated films is stealing…Stealing…Is Against…The Law…Piracy: It’s a crime.”

The purpose of the campaign was to change the public’s attitude towards piracy, but it failed miserably. In the years that followed movie piracy doubled, tripled and quadrupled, especially on BitTorrent.

The only good thing that came of it are the many parodies of the campaign which are quite entertaining. I’ve listed a couple of them below (including the original) but there are probably several I’ve missed.

If you know any other parodies please leave a comment and I’ll add it.

The Original

Bender’s Take on Piracy

The IT-Crowd’s Parody

Adult Parody

Europe’s Greens Promoting Sharing (not really a parody)

Update: The tune was actually “pirated”

Another Parody (Zachary)

Historical Piracy Warning Parody (Foo)

Yet Another Parody (noone)

Article from: FreakBits

Many governments are promoting the use of free and Open Source software, a move that stings the US pro-copyright lobby. In a recommendation to the US Trade Representative, lobbyists have now asked to put countries that promote Open Source software on a watchlist of capitalist enemies.

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) is a coalition of many pro-copyright groups including the MPAA, RIAA and the Business Software Association. Its aim is to protect their businesses from threats to their copyright exploitation models, and to convince lawmakers to clamp down on piracy.

Every year the outfit produces a set of recommendations for the US Government. It produces a list of countries that are a threat, recommending the US Trade Representative to put these on a watchlist. Usually, this has something to do with weak copyright laws but this year they see a news threat in addition to that.

Open Source software.

In other words, Firefox, WordPress, Ubuntu and Open Office are the software equivalent of the axis of evil.

Countries such as Indonesia, Brazil and India should be placed on the watchlist for their Open Source support according to the International Intellectual Property Alliance. With similar initiatives countries such as the UK, The Netherlands and others may soon follow.

Open Source software “simply weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness” while “it fails to build respect for intellectual property rights,” the IIPA recommendation says. “It encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations.”

Oh really?

What they really mean to say of course is that Open Software is saving the tax payers a lot of money, money that usually goes into the pockets of the some of the major software companies.

You can read more details on this absurd move at the excellent Guardian blog.

Article from: FreakBits

“Home Taping Is Killing Music” was the slogan used in a 1980s anti-piracy campaign by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). The slogan did very little to keep people from doing so, but over the years it has resulted in many hilarious references and parodies.

Below is one of these classics. The image has been popping up on various blogs for years and once again gained attention as it was posted on Gizmodo today.

In 1981 the Dead Kennedys printed “Home taping is killing record industry profits! We left this side blank so you can help” on one side of In God We Trust, Inc. cassette.

In the 30 years that passed not much has changed obviously.

The spin-offs of the slogan are just as funny though, or even more so. “Home Cooking Is Killing The Restaurant Industry,” is one of my personal favorites. What’s yours?

Article from: FreakBits

Carol Kaye, the 74 year old bass guitar legend recently discovered that some of her sheet music and courses are available on numerous torrent sites. She is determined to stop this blatant piracy, but unfortunately she’s targeting the wrong person.

Kaye decided to contact the owners of various torrent sites and for some reason she also contacted (our parent blog) TorrentFreak with the following message.

You are illegally offering my COPYRIGHTED EDUCATIONAL ITEMS as downloads on your website: (linking to fenopy.com)

CEASE AND DESIST! This is totally UNAUTHORIZED AND ILLEGAL! Remove this download of MY Internationally Copyrighted items on your website. You are in Violation of the Copyright Law – I am the ONLY ONE to sell my own items!

We don’t host any torrent files or TorrentFreak of course, and I kindly replied to her explaining that we are a weblog covering BitTorrent news. For some reason she wasn’t quite convinced, as we received the following reply after having exchanged a few more emails.

You’re a liar and a thief, CEASE AND DESIST!

Again, trying to be polite I explained that she was targeting the wrong person. Because I sympathized with her I even offered to help her out and get her in contact with the people who could remove the torrents. This wasn’t helping much though.

You’re a liar, a pirate, and a thief and a no-body – you’re coming down buddy, don’t give me that run-around BS! Whoever you are, you’re THIEF AND A DELIBERATE PIRATE!

I’m known to 100s of 1,000s of musician world-wide and they’re going to know about you too, posting you on my website which gets 100s of 1,000s of hits all the time! CEASE AND DESIST!

After one more attempt to explain that TorrentFreak has nothing to do with the site where she found her content I eventually gave up. But Carol didn’t.

A few hours later my inbox was starting to fill up with friends/fans or colleagues of Carol who were spitting out more false accusations. Below is one I received from Deb Hastings.

Ernesto – you are offering free downloads of intellectual property? I am referrng to Carol Kaye’s jazz improv books and accompanying cd’s. This is STEALING my man. What is wrong with you? You don’t steal from other people. This is illegal and in violation of the copyright law. What the hell kind of a preson are you? That you steal from other people? I am going to do everything I can – with as many other people as I can – to bust up your ugly little business. I am tenacious and you have now become my focus. You are a thief. Take her stuff off your site.

Sigh.. I give up.

Article from: FreakBits

An 88-year old man, carrying a walking stick and a camcorder, has been caught by movie theater personnel when he tried to make a private copy of the movie Avatar. The man was planning to show the film to his wife who could not make her way to the theater.

Recording a high profile blockbuster such as Avatar in a movie theater is a serious offense, so when the cinema manager at Glendale spotted a pirate, the police were called in immediately.

The man, who was probably unaware of the many high quality pirated copies that exist online, hoped to share the film with his wife at home in Australia, but swift police action prevented this.

The recording was deleted on the spot, but the police were smart enough not to arrest the movie cammer. They let him stay at the movie theater to finish the film.

Article from: FreakBits

Over the years the Pirate Bay crew has launched many brilliant web-projects that have enriched the lives of millions of people. Today, however, they take it up a notch hoping to revolutionize science with a groundbreaking project.

“5 years ago admins left TPB to pursue a new career and move into the field of user generated science: Science 2.0,” we read in a fresh doodle currently showing on the Pirate Bay homepage.

“After years of extensive research and development they are now proud to present the finalized work.”

Here’s what they’ve come up with. For the lulz….

Article from: FreakBits

Vertor.com, short for ‘verified torrents’, is a torrent indexer that takes moderation a bit further than most of its competitors. The site actually downloads every file, to check for viruses, DRM and other inconveniences.

Vertor goes even further than these basic check and allows its user to verify torrents though samples. For every video file, Vertor takes several screenshots so users can verify that it is actually the film the title says it is.

Similarly, for music torrents users can preview 20 seconds of the tracks, to avoid downloading the wrong files, wasting precious bandwidth.

The site launched in 2008 and has gained many regular visitors since. In an attempt to appeal to a whole new group of potential users the site produced and released the video below. For your consideration.

Article from: FreakBits

We’ve said it many times before, if the movie industry wants to stop piracy it should offer a superior product compared to pirated films. Right now, they are treating their paying customers as criminals while those who download illegally get to enjoy a movie without hassles.

Having to watch numerous warnings, ads and digital restrictions is not helping to compete with the movies that are available on BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks.

The image linked below says it all.

Check it out: Pirated vs. Legal DVD. (via)

Article from: FreakBits

AVG users who wanted to access The Pirate Bay in the last two days found that it was actively blocked by their anti-virus software. The popular torrent indexer contains active threats says AVG, that advises its users not to visit the site.

As most torrent sites, The Pirate Bay is bombarded with spam and scam related torrents every day. Moderators usually take care of these nasty uploads though so users usually don’t even notice they were there.

Malicious uploaders are not the only threat for torrent sites though, even more dangerous are the scammy advertisers who try to pass on trojans and other viruses through the site’s ads. Although these ads are often quickly banned by the ad network, they are online long enough to do some serious damage.

This weekend The Pirate Bay fell prey to such a malicious advertiser. As a result AVG anti-virus is now preventing Pirate Bay users from accessing the site, which can be annoying, but beats being infected by a trojan.

At the moment the issue with the malicious ads has been resolved and we expect than AVG will soon white-list the site so it can be accesses without any hassles.

Article from: FreakBits

Trident Media Guard, the French anti-piracy outfit that was picked by the music and movie industry to track down French pirates under the new ‘Hadopi’ anti-piracy law, has been spotted in action wasting resources in an attempt to stop a sole pirate.

Over the last years we’ve seen many companies that try to stop piracy by polluting file-sharing networks with fake data. These outfits are usually hired by major movie and music studios to ‘protect’ popular albums or movies by sending fake data or uploading fake files.

Trident Media Guard (TMG) is such an outfit. TMG has submitted a patent application for their revolutionary P2P-spamming technology and were recently chosen to participate in tracking down French pirates for the three-strikes law.

With all this experience you would expect that the company would pick their spots carefully, avoiding to waste resources. However, the opposite is true as a Canadian uploader of an album from the band Furnaceface recently discovered.

“I have had a FLAC upload for almost the last 2 years of an indie Canadian band named Furnaceface. Never had a lot of downloads with the torrent and I had to ‘babysit’ it as a seed for many months – but thats cool it’s indie and I knew it wouldn’t be popular. Until now,” Kitlope explains.

The screenshot below shows that TMG is ‘DDoSing’ the single uploader with many requests originating from IP-addresses in the same range.

Why TMG is wasting their resources on protecting a torrent of an indie band with only one seeder and no peers is not clear. The money it takes to ‘attack’ this torrent costs more than any potential sales piracy could ever cost.

Article from: FreakBits

Half a decade ago there were only a handful of musicians who shared their music via file-sharing networks, but this has changed radically.

BitTorrent sites have slowly started to replace record stores, with peers taking care of the music distribution.

More and more artists and indie labels have decided to give away their music without charging a penny. Instead, they hope to gather new fans that will support them through concert visits and by buying merchandising.

At FreakBits we are more than happy to support independent artists who publish their work for free on BitTorrent. One such band that recently uploaded its music onto BitTorrent and various other places is Citizen Collision.

“Citizen Collision is a band from Dallas, TX, ranging from rock to acoustic in genre. We offer all our music for free,” band member Caleb Killingsworth told FreakBits. “We feel that you should get our music from us instead of paying a company for it.”

“We all know most artists make the majority of their money from ticket and merch sales and that’s why we don’t charge for our music.”

“You can download Citizen Collision music off of most major music trackers, or download it from a new site I just launched for musicians to share their music, with no compression on your tracks like other music services,” Caleb added.

Of course the best way to get your music out to the masses is by uploading it to some of the major torrent sites, and that’s why you can also grab a copy from The Pirate Bay.

Photo by MarS.

Article from: FreakBits

Alan Carton, the brain behind the music release info blog Diditleak died of cancer last week. Alan was 23 years old.

Below is a passage of the The Village’s article on Alan, describing what he went though during the last years of his life.

“For two years, the Twitter account @diditleak was the secret weapon of online listeners and music critics alike. In real time, the account, which ultimately garnered over 11,500 followers, announced whenever a digital copy of a particularly desirable record first hit the Internet. For that it became a beloved resource of torrent-hungry music fans and writers angling for first listens. Using email tips and message-board-scouring alchemy, @diditleak seemed to know leaks better than anybody on Earth.”

As many others, we used Alan’s website as a resource numerous times. It is sad to see such a brilliant man passing away at such an early age.

Alan, you will be missed.

Article from: FreakBits

Movie industry boss Dan Glickman has announced that he will leave the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) this April, a few month before his contract ends.

As Chairman and CEO of the MPAA, Glickman helped lead the organization into a crusade against millions of people around the world, pushing strategies which can, and often were described as draconian.

Unlike his predecessor Jack Valenti, who held the office for 38 years, Glickman was not seen as the ideal movie industry leader by all insiders.

“The unhappiness focuses on the fact he’s a bad and boring speaker who has not repped the movie business well in Washington,” a Hollywood insider said last year, hinting at an early exit for the MPAA boss.

Glickman will be temporarily replaced by Bob Pisano until a replacement is found. Pisano has been Chief Operating Officer at the movie industry lobby group since 2005. Glickman continue his career as President of Refugees International.

Article from: FreakBits

Last Summer Jammie Thomas lost her retrial against the RIAA and was ordered to pay $1.92 million for 24 songs she shared via Kazaa. Many were shocked by the high amount of the fine, and so was Judge Davis who now lowered the fine to $54,000.

According to Judge Michael Davis the damages are lowered because the initial fine was “so grossly excessive as to shock the conscience of the court. A verdict is not considered excessive unless there is plain injustice or a monstrous or shocking result.”

The result is that, if Thomas is able to pay anything at all, the RIAA will have ‘only’ $54,000 to add to their anti-piracy funds instead of the $1.92 million it was awarded initially.

RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy previously informed us that the ‘damages’ will not go to any of the artists, but to more anti-piracy campaigns. “Any funds recouped are re-invested into our ongoing education and anti-piracy programs,” he said.

The RIAA has 7 days to challenge the reduced verdict and request for a new trial.

Joel Tenenbaum, the Boston student hit with $650,000 in damages back in July 2009, has filed for a new trial earlier this month, also because of excessive damages.

Article from: FreakBits

For the last days the EZTV website has been inaccessible. Worried TV fans can be reassured though, the site will return as soon as the current hardware issues are resolved.

With more than half a million visits a day, EZTV is the leading TV-torrent distribution group. It therefore comes as no surprise that the recent downtime sparked the wildest rumors.

But there is no reason to panic, as the site is expected to return soon.

FreakBits spoke with EZTV’s NovaKing who told us that he will fix the problems as soon as possible. The timing is not ideal though, as he is on holiday with limited Internet access.

In the meantime, EZTV users can find the group’s releases through verified sources such as BT-Chat.

Article from: FreakBits

The Pirate Bay has been inaccessible to millions of people over the last few hours, due to technical problems. There is no need to panic though, as the site is scheduled to be back online soon.

When one of the larger torrent sites goes offline many users immediately assume the worst. A blockade from their ISP, or even a raid on the site’s servers.

Despite prolonged downtime this weekend, The Pirate Bay is fine.

FreakBits was told by the Pirate Bay team that the current downtime is related to routing issues. The site is expected to return within a few hours.

In the meantime Pirate Bay users can always try out on of the other sites from the list of 25 most visited torrent sites.

Article from: FreakBits