TorrentFreak Email Update |
- WordPress Blocks Blog Following DMCA Takedown ‘Comment’
- LimeWire Resurrected By Secret Dev Team
- Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
- Sifonr: File-Sharing and P2P Video Chat Made Easy
| WordPress Blocks Blog Following DMCA Takedown ‘Comment’ Posted: 09 Nov 2010 05:14 AM PST A non-commercial blog which specializes in reporting on Amazon Kindle related news was taken down by WordPress after it linked to site hosting an unauthorized copy of a book. Although this is a legal act under Spanish law, WordPress blocked the site following a complaint from an anti-piracy group who said the blog owner had ignored them, but when one learns how they made that complaint, it's no surprise he did. “I’m pissed with WordPress, not as a blogging tool, but as domain hosting service,” explained Ricardo the owner of Kindlespain.es, a blog specializing in Kindle and eBook news. “Today I tried to write a new post, but I got a notice that the publication of articles was blocked. I had to get in touch with WordPress to see what the problem was.” WordPress responded as follows:
Here’s the background. In a blog post, Ricardo had bemoaned the fact that a book, Ken Follett’s ‘Fall of Giants’, wasn’t available in Spanish on the Kindle. He noted, however, that the publishers of the book didn’t mind people converting other formats but presumably to save people the bother of messing with DRM removal, he linked to an already converted copy hosted on a file-hosting service. This action ruffled the feathers of CEDRO (Spanish Reproduction Rights Center), a group which protects the intellectual property rights of authors and publishers who issued Ricardo with a takedown request, but made something of a mess of it. Instead of sending an email to him so that Ricardo could see who he was dealing with, CEDRO posted the takedown notice in the comments section of the article and were apparently surprised when they weren’t taken seriously. So they took their complaint to the next level, even though an email address for Ricardo is published clearly on the site. After introducing themselves, CEDRO told WordPress: “First of all we have tried to get in touch with the blogger directly but he has ignored our complaint, so the matter CAN NOT be resolved,” later adding, “Hereby, we request you to act formally and legally to remove the aforementioned copyrighted work. If not, we will feel a duty to proceed against those responsible.” Of course, Ricardo was pretty angry that WordPress took down his site and immediately wrote to CEDRO to complain. “They began with a lie, since at no time have I been contacted directly. A comment [underneath an article] is not valid,” he notes as he recalls his letter to the anti-piracy group. Indeed, it’s expected that a takedown request be delivered in a proper manner. But the problem goes deeper than this since Ricardo did nothing wrong. The letter sent by CEDRO to WordPress suggests that Kindlespain.es was hosting copyright works that needed to be removed. That is incorrect, the page carried only a link. Under Spanish law, tested on countless occasions in the last two years, linking to copyright works is completely legal, providing no profit is made directly from any infringement. Even though there is no chance that Ricardo could generate himself revenue from a file hosted on MegaUpload anyway, for the record Ricardo’s site makes no money and has zero advertising. This makes his site completely and utterly non-profit. “In Spain [copyright holders] have not closed any website with thousands of links, but it seems easier to go after a humble blog to see if it scares its writer into hiding under the bed,” says Ricardo. While one could argue that the publishers of ‘Fall of Giants’ have the right to protect their profits, they have to do that within the law. Furthermore, if they want to ensure that people go for official products and not pirate copies they have to fulfil demand, which includes publishing in popular languages on popular formats. “This is the Internet and the business model they want to impose. It’s in your hands to fight against it and fight for your rights,” Ricardo concludes. “Do not expect others to do it for you.” Adding insult to injury, the very first user comment on the article which contained the supposedly infringing link gives a very clear indication of how useful that link turned out to be..
Article from: TorrentFreak. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| LimeWire Resurrected By Secret Dev Team Posted: 08 Nov 2010 02:06 PM PST Last month, the Gnutella-based file-sharing client LimeWire was effectively outlawed after a U.S. federal judge granted a request from the RIAA to shut the software down. Now, not even a month later, LimeWire is back as good as new. Not only has a secret dev team reanimated the hugely popular client, but they have also made a few significant changes which make it better and more streamlined than before. While religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam lean heavily on spectacular resurrections from many hundreds of years ago, the mere mortal scriptwriters of the modern entertainment industry like to use the concept in their stories too. In this decade, Noah Bennet from Heroes wasn’t alone in returning to life after being shot since Nathan Petrelli also cheated the inevitability of the bullet with his own miraculous recovery. Going a little further back, anyone old enough to remember the 80s will recall that Bobby Ewing of Dallas evaded a permanent underground future by the fortuitous inclusion of a last-minute dream sequence. Some characters that refuse to stay dead aren’t always friendly though. How many times has Friday the 13th’s Jason met his maker? What’s the body count if one adds together the celluloid heart-stoppages of Freddy Kruger and Michael Myers from Halloween? Was Fatal Attraction’s Glenn Close dead, or simply enjoying a relaxing bath? In any event, if it means making money, it seems that Hollywood is always happy to make evil breathe again. That said, one monster Hollywood really hoped would stay dead after its drawn out torture and subsequent recent slaying was the hugely popular LimeWire file-sharing client. However, rather like the abuse suffered by the Black Knight in Monty Python and The Holy Grail, the sustained attack by the RIAA turned out to be a mere flesh wound. Although alternatives are available and growing in popularity, a secret dev team remained focused on reanimating the lifeless corpse of LimeWire and like an irrepressible file-sharing zombie, the world’s favorite Gnutella client is back.
“On October 26 the remaining LimeWire developers were forced to shut down the company’s servers and modify remote settings in the filesharing client to try to harm the Gnutella network. They were then laid off,” a source told TorrentFreak. “Shortly after, a horde of piratical monkeys climbed aboard the abandoned ship, mended its sails, polished its cannons, and released it free to the community.” And so, LimeWire Pirate Edition (LPE) was born. Based on the LimeWire 5.6 beta that was briefly released earlier this year and then withdrawn when Lime Wire LLC lost its lawsuit, LPE is now in the wild. In many ways, it is better than the version killed by the RIAA. “All dependencies on LimeWire LLC’s servers have been removed, all remote settings have been disabled, the Ask toolbar has been unbundled, and all features of LimeWire PRO have been activated for free,” our source explained. “LimeWire Pirate Edition should work better than the last functioning version of LimeWire (5.5.10), and it should keep working for longer. There’s no adware or spyware: the piratical monkeys are doing this for the benefit of the community.” Currently only available for Windows, in our tests LimeWire Pirate Edition functioned perfectly well and is already circulating on BitTorrent. Next up, Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine and the Sinclair C5 but before anyone gets any ideas, let’s leave Kazaa where it is. Article from: TorrentFreak. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent Posted: 08 Nov 2010 01:21 PM PST The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, 'Inception' tops the chart this week, followed by 'Scott Pilgrim vs the World'. 'The Social Network' completes the top three.
The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise. RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.
Article from: TorrentFreak. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sifonr: File-Sharing and P2P Video Chat Made Easy Posted: 08 Nov 2010 06:28 AM PST Have you ever wanted to have a live video chat with several friends while simultaneously sharing files with them? With the brand new Sifonr service you can. It's beauty is that it is all supported by Adobe Flash's latest P2P technology and easy to embed in any website. Sifonr has the potential to become the next generation communication tool on the web, but has to be careful that it doesn't turn into a chatroulette on steroids. Sifonr is so new that it doesn’t really fall into an existing category of web-services. It is best described as a multi-user version of live streaming services such as Justin.tv and Ustream, supported by P2P technology, topped off with fully-fledged file-sharing capabilities. With a single click, users can create a Flash-based live video feed. Others can join the feed, send their own video and also share other files if they wish. The name Sifonr originates from the word ‘siphon’ which is a U-shaped tube – a YouTube. The service uses the latest P2P capabilities of Adobe’s Flash and is the first site to really show off what it can do for real-time communication and file-sharing. It is not going to be any competition for torrent sites, but the innovative use of P2P technology makes it definitely worth a mention on TorrentFreak. Aside from video and text chatting, Sifonr allows users to share files in real-time. To top it off the Flash-based Sifons can be embedded just as easily as a YouTube video, so people can post them to Facebook or their blogs (styleable widgets are available) to provide a direct communication channel or discussion platform. A Sifon..
TorrentFreak spoke to Floze, the founder of the site, who sees Sifonr as a potential next generation communication tool. “Sifonr is about sharing your thoughts and ideas, kinda like on YouTube, only in a more direct and more involved way. It’s not supposed to be another spin-off of some video or live-chat portal, I rather see it as a new way of communication.” “For me it means the simple and logical ‘next step’ of today’s web-interaction, even if it turns out to be ‘only’ an interesting social experiment in the end,” Floze says. “The borders between author and reader, artist and beholder, broadcaster and consumer have diminished ever since I can remember. Now with Sifonr you are always both at the same time. Just passively enjoy it, or be an active part of it.” In theory, thousands of people can join and share files in a single Sifon, but this of course will make the video streaming part pretty much unusable. Since the service has no real competitors it will be interesting to see how the public decides to use it. One feature that works well with multiple people is the file-sharing part. Floze told TorrentFreak that adding file-sharing support seemed only logical since the video and audio streaming is P2P based as well. “File-sharing in a Sifon works pretty much like in any file sharing software – you load (seed) the file, it gets chopped into chunks of data, others get notified of its presence, and the downloaded pieces are immediately shared between peers and put back together when completed. Once a file is loaded into a Sifon, it is available as long as one healthy seeder.” “The major limitation Adobe put on sharing is that, for security reasons, all shared data needs to be loaded into the system memory instead of being read and written from disc. The ‘official’ limit is supposed to be at 100MB per shared file, but I see no reason why more shouldn’t work if the RAM is sufficient. There shouldn’t be anything keeping you from sharing larger files, at least for stuff up to around 1GB,” Floze explained. Any type of file can be shared in a Sifon, but FLV (flash video) files that are encoded with the latest magic h.264 and AC3 get a special treatment. These files are played directly and instantly in the Sifon as soon as sufficient data is buffered. Instant MP3 playing is another feature that is currently on the roadmap and will be implemented in the near future. “I only created a piece of software that I thought was kind of missing, and that I’d use myself because I think it is fun. I hope that people use it to do something productive and enjoyable, though unfortunately I have seen many wanking dicks too [which receive an instant ban from sifonr.com] from people who think it’s all another Chatroulette clone. I hope it’s more than that,” Floze told TorrentFreak. People who’re interested in trying Sifonr can start their own Sifon in just a few clicks (language can be set to English). The service works as advertised but people should keep in mind that it’s still in startup mode, and caution is advised while browsing Sifons as there’s no 24/7 flesh patrol yet. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is a requirement as the P2P technology wasn’t implemented in earlier versions. Article from: TorrentFreak. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This week there are three newcomers in the list. Inception is the most downloaded movie on BitTorrent for the second week in a row.
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