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Posts with tag BitTorrent

Nine Inch Nails Gives Away New Album Online

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Mar 3rd 2008 at 11:17AM

Nine Inch Nails Gives Away New Album on Torrent Sites

Trent Reznor and his conspirators in Nine Inch Nails are hard at work trying to destroy the music industry as we know it. Following a year in which Reznor told his fans to steal his music and then produced an album for Saul Williams that he gave away for free, the dark Prince (as in Prince, the artist, not Satan) has cobbled together a new album of material and is offering the first installment of it as a free download.

Unlike the Radiohead free album experiment of last year, Reznor is covering all his bases. The first part of 'Ghosts I-IV' is available as a free download both from the official NIN page and via torrents (file-sharing networks) uploaded by the band themselves to popular sites such as Pirate Bay. The band encourages fans to share the album via peer-to-peer (P2P) methods such as Bit Torrent, on Web sites, and in podcasts.

If you don't mind throwing a little cash the band's way, you can get all four volumes in a variety of DRM-less formats -- including the lossless FLAC format that audiophiles love -- for only $5. And if you absolutely must have a physical copy, then you can shell out $10 for the two-CD version, which is quite a steal compared to other two-CD special editions. For the truly fanatical, check out the $75 or $300 deluxe editions that include data DVDs, hardbound fabric booklets, Blu-ray videos, and, in the case of the more expensive version, limited-edition prints of album art signed by Reznor himself.

From TorrentFreak

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Top 10 Pirated TV Shows and Movies in 2007

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jan 2nd 2008 at 1:09PM

Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows and Movies in '07

We all know by now that piracy is rampant on the Internet, especially since the advent of super-fast broadband connections and BitTorrent, the current file-sharing method of choice. But do you ever wonder what exactly people are pirating? If so, you're in luck, since the TorentFreak blog has crunched data from the popular Mininova torrent site and found the 10 most downloaded movies and TV shows from 2007.

Take a gander, and before you judge the questionable taste of the online masses exposed in this list, remember this: At least they're not paying for it.

Movies
  1. 'Transformers'
  2. 'Knocked Up'
  3. 'Shooter'
  4. 'Pirates Of The.Caribbean At World's End'
  5. 'Ratatouille'
  6. '300'
  7. 'Next'
  8. 'Hot Fuzz'
  9. 'The Bourne Ultimatum'
  10. 'Zodiac'
TV-Shows
  1. 'Heroes'
  2. 'Top Gear'
  3. 'Battlestar Galactica'
  4. 'Lost'
  5. 'Prison Break'
  6. 'Desperate Housewives'
  7. '24'
  8. 'Family Guy'
  9. 'Dexter'
  10. 'Scrubs'

From TorrentFreak

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Comcast Cable Sued Over Bandwidth "Throttling"

by Tim Stevens, posted Nov 15th 2007 at 3:21PM

Comcast Sued Over Bandwidth ThrottlingJon Hart, a Californian who has filed a suit against Comcast, is claiming that not only is the company violating its own "Crazy Fast Speeds" advertising, but is breaking federal computer fraud laws.

When it was speculated that Comcast was doing shady things to limit and even block its subscribers' use of bandwidth-hungry applications, the company responded that the accusations were largely untrue. It then admitted to taking steps that were "temporary and intended to improve surfing for other users."

Hart's accusations stem from claims that Comcast is actively blocking peer-to-peer network traffic. Peer-to-peer traffic is most often used by file sharing applications like Kazaa or BitTorent for sharing music or videos. Comcast is allegedly sending fake signals to these applications that make them stop transmission of data, effectively shutting them down. It could be argued that such fake signals are not altogether different from a hacker taking control of your computer.

Beyond that, the suit mentions that nothing in Comcast's user agreement bars file sharing, and that their advertising claiming "unfettered access" to all of the Internet is misleading. For its part, Comcast has denied blocking peer-to-peer applications, yet also says:
We have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good Internet experience and we use the latest technologies to manage our network so that they can continue to enjoy these applications.
We'll be watching this story very closely going forward.

From Wired

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Two More Pirate Sites Shut Down -- For Now

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 24th 2007 at 5:24PM

UK BitTorrent Site TV-Links.co.UK Closed, For Now


Another major BitTorrent site has been shuttered... for now. This time it's the U.K.based tv-links.co.uk. TV-Links was closed down for providing links to illegal copies of major motion pictures and TV shows. The closing of the site was accompanied by raids and the arrest of a 26-year-old man from Cheltenham, England for facilitating copy right infringement.

Officers from the Gloucestershire County Council Trading Standards Service, the Gloucestershire Police, and FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) worked together to bring the popular Torrent site down.

In addition, this week saw the closure of OiNK BitTorrent Tracker, an invite-only site that specializes in leaking albums before their official release.

TV-Links and OiNK BitTorrent Tracker are just latest target sin the fight against piracy. In 2003, popular site SuperNova.org closed up shop due to mounting legal pressure, as did the "world's largest" BitTorrent repository, The Pirate Bay. Both services returned, though, to their full illegal glory after only a fairly short closing, and it is likely that the same will happen with TV-Links and OiNK.

From the Guardian Unlimited and Ars Technica


















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Comcast Blocking Certain Types of Internet Traffic

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 22nd 2007 at 4:44PM

AP Confirms Comcast Blocking File Sharing Traffic
From our 'so much for Net Neutrality' department comes a story from the Associated Press, which assigned a reporter to see if there was any validity to recent accusations that Comcast, the cable TV and Internet provider, is throttling and/or blocking file-sharing on its networks.

The AP turned to the Bible, which is public domain and legal to share. The tests were run from two different PCs in the Philadelphia and San Francisco areas. The reporter found that two out of three times, the peer-to-peer BitTorrent transfer was blocked completely. The third time the transfer only started after a 10-minute delay.

Control tests were run on other providers, Cablevision and Time Warner Cable, and no blockage or throttling was documented in those tests.

You can read more about exactly how Comcast blocked traffic on AP's more extensive story here, but suffice it to say that future blockage could be applied to more legit sites and services such as Joost, Skype, and online-video-rental-service Vudu.

This is exactly the sort of heavy handed tactic proponents of Net Neutrality have feared, and the widespread reporting may help bring the issue of Net Neutrality into the limelight.

From BetaNews and the AP

For further reading on Net Neutrality, visit these sites:


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Prince Sues Three Sites Over Piracy of His Music

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Sep 14th 2007 at 11:26AM

Prince Sues eBay, YouTube, and Pirate Bay
Prince (The Artist Formerly Known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince), is taking on three sites that he says are primarily responsible for the online piracy of his music. Prince and a company called Web Sheriff are working closely together to get the offending material pulled from both YouTube and eBay. The third site named in the suit is Torrent peer-to-peer file sharing network / repository Pirate Bay.

Web Sheriff announced that it had successfully removed 2,000 YouTube videos and had 300 auctions pulled from eBay. The statement went on to say "Prince strongly believes artists as the creators and owners of their music need to reclaim their art."

We think that perhaps Prince should reclaim his dignity and stop suing outlets where his fans get together to share music, memorabilia, and experiences. Look Prince, baby, you don't want to do this. Have you looked at Metallica recently? That band's crusade against piracy did nothing for its members' careers.

From BetaNews

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'Bionic Woman' and Other TV Pilots Leaked Online

by Tim Stevens, posted Jul 30th 2007 at 3:01PM

Fall Network Pilots Online NowEvery summer, when the weather's (usually) nice, TV networks go dormant, filling their programming slots with endless repeats and stupid new game shows hosted by B-list celebrities. In the Fall, they wheel out the big guns and launch salvos of expensive premier pilots at each other -- all to win the never-ending war for viewership.

This year, a few of those salvos have had their potential downgraded, thanks to the leaking of their storylines online. Within the past week, the scripts for pilots for new series like 'Bionic Woman,' a modernized take on the classic 1970s 'Bionic Woman' series, appeared online on many popular peer-to-peer sites where pirated copies of movies and TV are downloaded.

Other scripts that have shown up fon these sites include 'The Sarah Connor Chronicles,' an Arnie-less spin off of the 'Terminator' movies, and 'Cavemen,' the seemingly ill-fated sitcom based on the tragic Geico commercials.

If television history is any indicator, most of these plots are doomed and won't last more than a season or two anyway, but we sure are digging the 'Bionic Woman' preview (the show is being produced by David Eick, the same guy behind the revamped 'Battlestar Galactica,' and even stars Katee Sackoff, who plays Starbuck on BSG).


From Newsvine

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'Sicko' Leaks, Weinstein Freaks

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jun 19th 2007 at 12:34PM

'Sicko' Leaks, Weinstein Freaks'Sicko', Michael Moore's sure-to-be-scathing new documentary about the health care industry, has been leaked onto the Internet a good two weeks before its scheduled June 29th release date. First came a high quality version -- apparently ripped from a pre-release screener DVD -- that made its way through the BitTorrent file-sharing channels. Then, two separate users posted the film on YouTube in its entirety, broken up into fourteen, Web-friendlier chunks. Between 700 and 900 people viewed the movie on YouTube, which was quickly pulled once the site received complaints from Lionsgate, which is handling domestic distribution of the film for The Weinstein Co.

The Weinstein Co. is more than a little peeved, "Every DVD screener that comes from the Weinstein Co. is watermarked and traceable," said general counsel for the company, Peter Hurwitz. "We are actively investigating who illegally uploaded 'Sicko' to the Internet, and we will take appropriate action against that person."

To dissuade people from downloading 'Sicko,' or, to at least make it more difficult, anti-piracy firms have launched a campaign to flood the Internet with fake versions of the film, a tactic similar to what the recording industry has done with songs that leak.

Moore, on the other hand, is less concerned. He's reiterated his long time stance in favor of people copying and distributing his films, "I think the music industry's response to Napster was misguided ... and for me, it's about getting people to see the movie and that's what I want, so they will talk about it ... I would never want to prosecute anybody who would download [one of my films]."

From Newsvine

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