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The article makes it seem like a covert/mystical action, but really, anyone who has been reading TorrentFreak in the days since the TPB offer of sale and events surrounding the trial will know that people have been thinking about ways to mirror TPB for a while now, under the assumption that it will sink: http://torrentfreak.com/its-time-to-sink-the-pirate-bay-and-replace-it-090913/ , http://torrentfreak.com/torrented-pirate-bay-copy-comes-to-life-090820/ , etc...

The article makes it seem like a covert/mystical action, but really, anyone who has been reading TorrentFreak in the days since the TPB offer of sale and events surrounding the trial will know that people have been thinking about ways to mirror TPB for a while now, under the assumption that it will sink: http://torrentfreak.com/its-time-to-sink-the-pirate-bay-and-replace-it-090913/ , http://torrentfreak.com/torrented-pirate-bay-copy-comes-to-life-090820/ , etc...

Hid.im is a new web-based service that allows users to hide .torrent files inside PNG images. This means that users can easily upload hidden torrent files to their favorite image hosting service and forums, or use it as an avatar on social networking sites without being censored.

http://torrentfreak.com/hidim-converts-torrents-into-png-images-090714/

Excellent job with reading comprehension. The point of the article isn't that his music was pulled from MySpace. That is simply the introduction that led him to discover that a MAJOR RECORD LABEL is distributing his COPYRIGHTED content without license and making money off him.

This is an ironic article because these thieving corporations are currently taking people to court based on copyright infringement.

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-tricks-anti-pirates-with-fake-peers-081020/

Polluting the evidence works like this. When a client asks for a list of peers who are downloading the same torrent, the tracker software automatically inserts several âoerandom IP addressesâ that are not in the swarm. They are based on existing sub-nets, but might be from people who may not even be aware that BitTorrent exists.

Have a look at this article from torrent freak (complete with update saying TPB is back on the results page):

http://torrentfreak.com/google-removes-pirate-bay-frontpage-from-search-results-091002/

While stirring up this latest uproar, it turns out that Lily Allen was at the same time distributing illegal mix tapes on her Web site.

Hypocrite.

So, Microsoft is breaking the law in Brazil

And I still wonder if any of that money is actually going to the artists. Because I think they don't see a cent and that that is the main point over actually selling stuff.

There was an article a few weeks ago about swedish artist Magnus Uggla, who apparently is mad as hell about Spotify and isn't going to take it any longer. The article is here (in Swedish). A summary in english is here.

Some basics things: Uggla, who's a reasonably big artist in Sweden, made as much from Spotify as he claims an average busker in the street makes in a day. Sony has bought 6% of Spotify, valued at 2 billion SEK for 30,000 SEK. His conclusion for why Spotify would agree to that deal is that Sony in return lets Spotify get their artists on the cheap. In other words, Sony makes money, the artists do not.

In the swedish article Hasse Breiholtz of Sony Sweden defends the arrangement by saying that Spotify wouldn't exist if the artists would get paid better for now. He says you have to give the legal services a chance to establish themselves first, and later raise the fees to a level where the artists get fairly compensated.

...as evidenced by the video
So, will the Feds charge Bush for theft & prosecute him?
After all Al Capone wasn't convicted of the many murders he committed.
He was convicted of a stupid tax evasion charge.
And as per existing laws, if you rob $10 from a bank you get 20 years, but if you fraud $50 million you get a probation.
So, Bush can be charged and convicted of copyright violation!

Because they own the rights to the songs, the songs aren't based on a commercial song, and have a different pattern than RIAA songs and also lack a DRM copyprotection scheme.

Legal Torrents

Torrent sites that serve only legal torrents

Michael David Crawford Music unlike any commercial music at all.

Links to tens of thousands of legal free music downloads listed by Michael David Crawford.

See for yourself, some music was meant to be free.

It sounds like the bunch are yet another single issue party. Single issue parties get nowhere.

...except maybe the European parliament?

I suppose that you're tying to imply there is no American (mainly corporate) influence attempting to impose their financially motivated desires on on sovereign government. I find that very difficult to believe.

First, see this http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-begged-sweden-to-take-down-the-piratebay/ and reference therein. "As I am sure you are aware, the American Embassy has sent entreaties to the Swedish government urging it to take action against The Pirate Bay and other organizations operating within Sweden that facilitate copyright theft."

Note that many of the companies suing are the Swedish counterparts of American founded and headquartered corporations.

From your wikipedia reference: "The raid, alleged by The Pirate Bay to be politically motivated and under pressure from the Motion Picture Association of AMERICA (MPAA),[14] was reported as a success by the MPAA in the immediate aftermath but with the website being restored within days and file sharing now firmly in focus in the Swedish media, The Pirate Bay considered the raid "highly unsuccessful" for the site's operation.[15]" (emphasis mine)

Very true. Being that Torrents are easily linked on websites, they are much better for promoting a band or festival. For instance, the giant (mostly indie rock) festival South by Southwest released 1267 mp3s from bands at their 2009 festival, available via Bittorrent.

No. You should read the article I linked. It's very long, but it's a good read.

There already was a copyright law, and it allowed 14 years - a term which was considered reasonable and which has been determined to be optimal. The law he was arguing against proposed the life of the author plus 25 years. It was modified to conform to his recommendation of a longer than 14 but finite and predictable length of 42 years from publication, no extensions, no consideration for the longevity of the author. It was made law in England, and then by treaty in most of the rest of the world, and remained the law until 1976 (over 130 years).

It was only until 1976, and more regrettably 1998 that the law he was arguing against was adopted in the US.

Under the current law works published in 1923 will not expire from copyright until 2019 at the earliest, or much later in others. It's reasonable to expect that copyright will be extended yet again before this date, and so on in perpetuity, rendering copyright essentially eternal. This so defeats the social contract of copyright, so defeats the stated purpose of the "promotion of progress" and is so obviously an unfair law that people simply will not comply with it. Since they're already getting in the habit of breaking the copyright law, the don't bother with subtle niceties like discriminating between ebooks of 1984 and a prerelease movie.

And so... the outcome he warned against was avoided in his lifetime. He did a good service to his nation and the world. Because we've ignored his warning we find ourselves in our current state. That's what make this thread "done in one".

And it could be a way for someone to establish plausible deniability that they were posting a torrent. e.g. a blog post deploring the loss of revenue for Metalica with a picture of the band's latest almbum that happens to hide a torrent for that albumn. ("oh the irony, I just grabbed that image off google images and little did I know that particular one held a torrent. wink wink")

That would be steganography.

According to TFA, Hid.im pictures look like this: http://torrentfreak.com/images/hidim.jpg

http://torrentfreak.com/p2p-collection-costs-man-huge-fine-suspended-sentence-090704/

Man in France was just sentenced for 12,591 MP3 files, 426 movies, 16 full TV-series and dozens of items of pirated software. The man was sentenced to 33,000 euros ($46,200) in damages and a 2 month suspended jail sentence.

They are not quite as big of jerks over there it seems. He had considerably more than 24 songs and was only fined about 50k.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4718249.stm
http://torrentfreak.com/why-pirates-buy-more-music-and-music-labels-fail-090428/
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2347/125/

Dead thread, but i thought it was worth replying to anyway. There've been a slew of reports on /., ars etc, and they seem to have the numbers behind them unlike the industry's: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/05/ben-goldacre-bad-science-music-downloads

So does this mean we can't hack anti piracy organizations any more? http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-website-now-with-torrents-090502/ http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-site-features-torrentfreaks-latest-news-090504/

So does this mean we can't hack anti piracy organizations any more? http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-website-now-with-torrents-090502/ http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-site-features-torrentfreaks-latest-news-090504/

http://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-rapidshare-to-proactively-filter-content-090624/

The Regional Court in Hamburg, Germany, has ruled that file-hosting service Rapidshare must proactively filter certain content. Music industry outfit GEMA asked the court to ban Rapidshare from making 5,000 tracks from its catalogue available on the Internet. The court estimated the value of the tracks at $34 million.

You must have missed the whole Pirate Bay trial in Sweden where the record industry guys completely failed to do basic homework on the relevant technology by submitting flawed screen shots as evidence. Yes, they won the trial but seemingly on the say so of an allegedly biased judge rather than on the merits of the case they put before the court.

So, if the plaintiffs can't manage to submit evidence of an actual infringement to a trial which was covered by media across the world, what makes you think their counterparts in this case would do better? If anyone is in danger of pissing off a judge due to frivolous bullshit my money would be on the RIAA.

You must have missed the whole Pirate Bay trial in Sweden where the record industry guys completely failed to do basic homework on the relevant technology by submitting flawed screen shots as evidence. Yes, they won the trial but seemingly on the say so of an allegedly biased judge rather than on the merits of the case they put before the court.

So, if the plaintiffs can't manage to submit evidence of an actual infringement to a trial which was covered by media across the world, what makes you think their counterparts in this case would do better? If anyone is in danger of pissing off a judge due to frivolous bullshit my money would be on the RIAA.

You must have missed the whole Pirate Bay trial in Sweden where the record industry guys completely failed to do basic homework on the relevant technology by submitting flawed screen shots as evidence. Yes, they won the trial but seemingly on the say so of an allegedly biased judge rather than on the merits of the case they put before the court.

So, if the plaintiffs can't manage to submit evidence of an actual infringement to a trial which was covered by media across the world, what makes you think their counterparts in this case would do better? If anyone is in danger of pissing off a judge due to frivolous bullshit my money would be on the RIAA.

> People can and do frame others for crimes. Scientologists have a
> long running history of it, I don't doubt that copy-right leachers

Scientology's fingerprints are all over the anti-pirate side. Makes sense that an evil cult would support an evil law. Look into
"Monique Wadsted"

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-prosecution-law-firm-under-attack-090426/

why yes, yes i would.

http://torrentfreak.com/download-a-free-car-from-bittorrent-090506/

A little flashback regarding MediasEntry's and RIAA's methods:
http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-sued-for-fraud-abuse-and-legal-sham-090301/
http://torrentfreak.com/riaas-week-of-hell-080927/
http://torrentfreak.com/copyright-lawyer-exposes-riaa-legal-bullying-080730/

A little flashback regarding MediasEntry's and RIAA's methods:
http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-sued-for-fraud-abuse-and-legal-sham-090301/
http://torrentfreak.com/riaas-week-of-hell-080927/
http://torrentfreak.com/copyright-lawyer-exposes-riaa-legal-bullying-080730/

A little flashback regarding MediasEntry's and RIAA's methods:
http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-sued-for-fraud-abuse-and-legal-sham-090301/
http://torrentfreak.com/riaas-week-of-hell-080927/
http://torrentfreak.com/copyright-lawyer-exposes-riaa-legal-bullying-080730/

I thought one of the arguments for the Pirate Bay was that it didn't hurt the entertainment industries. The guy who got load of flower from pirates made this claim during the trials (from TorrentFreak):

Professor and media researcher Roger Wallis appeared as an expert witness at the Pirate Bay trial yesterday. He was questioned on the link between the decline of album sales and filesharing. Wallis told the court that his research has shown that there is no relation between the two.

So the entertainment industries had a legitimate argument in the first place? Christ, no wonder TPB lost the case. Hell, even a judge associated with Republicans voted in favor for evolution when Dover School Board went to court for the "evolution is just a theory" disclaimer, so anything is (or was) possible.

Unfortunately, TPB also helps pirate software, which in turn helps the likes of Microsoft, because of the network effect. So nothing is perfect, I guess.

Why is this "unfortunate" while downloading music or movies for free is OK?

• There ARE games for Linux

Solitaire doesn't count :)
Your argument for the fact that "there ARE games for Linux" is that there ARE games for linux. Are there cool games for Linux? I doubt it. Look at the most pirated games... how many of them run on Linux? Why the hell would I install Linux if I can't play my favorite games? The coolest things about PCs is that you can use them to play games!

I like your shiny bullet list. Here's mine (I hope you haven't patented it already):

• Torrentfreak - Top 10 Most pirated Games of 2008

Didn't the European Parliament just rule that this sort of thing was illegal?

A harsh ban is illegal? Sure, that makes sense; but I don't think that's the point that this group of companies is trying to make.

They are simply whining because there's money involved; and people often listen to whiners, don't they? "Ask and you shall receive."

The fact that they're allied on "facts" that are more fiction says to me that someone's just stirring the pot.

50% was a very early "guesstimate" for file sharing "losses". It may be proved to be false, but it ignores the mathematical world of statistics.

Just watch: if they get their way, even the newspaper that's printed will be DRM'ed so you can't photocopy it.

The "victims" of what's called "piracy" get FREE advertising and product demos from people who only want something that works for them. That's a population segment that isn't completely covered by their lazy or ineffective marketing.

They should be looking at this as a PR opportunity rather than whining because other people can't grow up. What bothers me is the "you're stupid, so I'll act stupider" mentality. It never ends!

And now that the dead horse is beat, I say "neigh" to it all.

Didn't the European Parliament just rule that this sort of thing was illegal?

Yes, probably why they are trying to motivate the UK gov to resist (as if it needed any more motivation).

"according to an expert an the specialised area that is European politics, this amendment could be significant and might spike the guns of the pro-copyright "flog 'em and hang 'em' brigade" (now led by French President, Nicholas Sarkozy)."
http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?newsid=43004&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10

spike the guns, indeed.

Didn't the European Parliament just rule that this sort of thing was illegal?

Apple does not have your best interests in mind, only its bottom line.

As opposed to all the other companies out there who do have your best interests in mind?

How is Apple different from Google, who recently cancelled uTorrent's Google custom torrent search? http://torrentfreak.com/google-custom-search-cuts-utorrent-off-090430/
Should I stay away from the iPhone, Android based phones, who else?

You should really read either TFA, or a better explanation at torrentfreak: http://torrentfreak.com/music-industrys-plea-for-pirate-bay-damages-backfires-090510/

Basically what is ahppenning here is that low amounts of money are ebing sent to thsi law firm, and then they are requested back as a "wrong payment" - meaning that the firm still needs to collect them, accoutn for them, process them, and then mail them back. This is required by Swedish law. In fact, no one will lose a single cent, except the companies in processing fees :)

> Enough with this stupid dumbass fucking argument.

So fucking stop using it, dumbass.

> What is wrong with making software and trying to sell it?

Nothing.

> What is wrong with a fierce filesharing prohibition and censorship in order to _force_ people into buying?

Everything.

> Please, shut the fuck up already.

No. Shutting up, giving up essential freedoms and knuckling under financial "interests" is what brought us the "intellectual property" regimes worldwide. Fuck that. No shutting up any more. See you this summer in the EU parliament. And this is just a beginning.

How about a game where you just drive a bus through the desert for 8 hours? Oh wait... it's already been done!

I would use one of those wireless bittorrent routers with a built-in HD and build a battery for that.

I guess you could also hide it somewhere under a ceiling with access to a powerline and a good directional antenna to steal the bandwidth from some distance away.

Naturally it could also be your own router you're 'stealing' from, if you bury it in the garden somewhere where the cops wouldn't go look for it. ;-)

Since you could move the downloaded stuff via web later and configure the router from anywhere in the world, you'd never go near that router again.

I know, for that price you'd get a cheap netbook too, only good directional antennas for those are hard to come by.

http://torrentfreak.com/review-the-wireless-bittorrent-router/

By the way, I am not being a 'selfish leech' -

So you're not using BitTyrant then?

"It appears that the court chose to not take any of the technical details into account and only judged based on intent. They find it clear that the intention of the defendants is to facilitate sharing of copyrighted works and based their verdict on this." http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-trial-the-verdict-090417/

"Kennedy was asked why they haven't sued Google the same way as TPB. He said that Google said they would partner IFPI in fighting piracy and he has a team of 10 people working with Google every day, and if Google hadn't announced they were a partner, IFPI would have sued them too." (src)

"Kennedy was asked why they haven't sued Google the same way as TPB. He said that Google said they would partner IFPI in fighting piracy and he has a team of 10 people working with Google every day, and if Google hadn't announced they were a partner, IFPI would have sued them too." (src)

"Kennedy was asked why they haven't sued Google the same way as TPB. He said that Google said they would partner IFPI in fighting piracy and he has a team of 10 people working with Google every day, and if Google hadn't announced they were a partner, IFPI would have sued them too." (src)

"Kennedy was asked why they haven't sued Google the same way as TPB. He said that Google said they would partner IFPI in fighting piracy and he has a team of 10 people working with Google every day, and if Google hadn't announced they were a partner, IFPI would have sued them too." (src)

"Kennedy was asked why they haven't sued Google the same way as TPB. He said that Google said they would partner IFPI in fighting piracy and he has a team of 10 people working with Google every day, and if Google hadn't announced they were a partner, IFPI would have sued them too." (src)

Wait... let me understand what you said.

You have the oportunity to be read by thousands of people around the world.... And there is the posibility that some of them like what you write and want to buy your book or any other thing that you write.

And you don't want to see the oportunity because you "don't want somebody taking your labor without pay".

I think that Paulo Coelho differs with you.

P.D.: sorry for my bad english.

In a similar vein, http://torrentfreak.com/economy-profits-from-file-sharing-report-concludes-090119/:

The researchers further found that people who download music and movies are not buying less than people who don't. In fact, downloaders are reported to be more frequent visitors of concerts, and game downloaders actually bought more games than those who didn't. In the music industry, lesser-know bands profit most from file-sharing, the researchers report.

I'm still constantly surprised to see people using TBP for their downloads - especially when this buts up against articles like: "Malware bundled with torrents".

The thing is, malware in torrents is (despite rumours to the contrary) vanishingly rare. I've downloaded maybe 20 different apps via bittorrent over the last 5 years, some popular (Windows XP, Office 2007), some not so popular (Resharper, some Hentai games). I haven't seen _any_ malware. I always install on a VM first and watch for unusual network activity and scan with Kaspersky to be sure, but so far I have been clean. The only time I've found malware in relation to pirated software it was from a keygen web site (I forget which one; crack.ms, I think) which dropped a trojan in the root directory of the zip file I downloaded while the real keygen was in a subdirectory.

One of the reasons there's a perception of there being malware in torrents is you'll find a lot of newbies posting about having the following experience:

* Download application + crack via bittorrent
* Scan with a popular virus scanner (e.g. Norton) before installing
* Virus scanner gives an alert in relation to the crack
* Newbie deletes download & posts a warning somewhere.

What the newbie didn't realise at step 3 is that the alert exists because the popular virus scanners include definitions designed to catch perfectly legitimate cracks and describe them as "hacking tools" (legitimate from the perspective of the software pirate, at least; I doubt commercial software providers would generally agree about the legitimacy of such tools) so there probably _isn't_ any malware in the download at all. Kaspersky doesn't spread this kind of FUD, which is one of the reasons I recommend it.

The recent story of actual malware being found in actual popular torrents is unusual, hence the fact that it has come to such wide attention. Occasionally you'll see shit like this happen, but that's rare too, and bloody obvious to anyone who has the first clue what they're doing (i.e., anyone smart enough to figure out how to get usenet downloads working reliably).

(Posting anon for obvious reasons)

I worry what kind of precedent this will set for Newzbin.