TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Take.fm Pushes Movie Torrents To The Next Level
- StarCraft 2 and Blizzard’s BitTorrent Paradox
- Despite Confusion, Village Still Wants Torrent Site Investment
| Take.fm Pushes Movie Torrents To The Next Level Posted: 10 Aug 2010 03:58 AM PDT Take.fm is a new movie torrent indexer that is a step above the plain old torrent indexes most BitTorrent users have become used to. The site, which only lists verified and high quality releases, combines a pleasant and great looking user interface with all the functionality needed to find the best films.
Take.fm is a torrent indexer, meaning that the site does not operate its own tracker. Those browsing through the site will immediately notice that it's unlike any other indexer. The site is developed by the owner of Coda.fm, a music site that launched last year. Similar to Coda.fm, the looks and unique features of Take.fm set the site apart from most of the competition, this time focusing on the movie niche. TorrentFreak got in touch with the owner of both sites to find out more about his newest project. “As I did before with Coda.fm, I wanted to create a new kind of movie torrents site, open for everyone and one that offered a user experience comparable to the best e-commerce websites,” Take.fm’s owner told TorrentFreak. “We don’t have to get used to a third-rate user experience just for dealing with torrents. I tried to build a website that I – and hopefully all the torrents community – would enjoy using.” Visitors to the site will indeed notice that the site looks more like a movie store or rental site than the average torrent index. The movies are presented nicely and users can browse through different genres and list movies based on popularity and the date they were added. Although the site has just launched, there are already over a 1000 titles listed, all verified by the site’s members. “The website went online only a few hours ago, so the movies available now are the ones that a few invited users uploaded during a closed beta period. We have now approx. 1400 movies and 1900 torrents. As happened with Coda.fm, we expect to build a great user base, with many contributors that could help us to greatly increase our catalog.” Although the browsing experience is neat, the features we described earlier can be found on most other torrent indexers as well. What really sets Take.fm apart from other sites is the presentation and features of the movie torrent pages. Here users can find all the info they need on a movie torrent, including a description, IMDB rating, a review and details specific to the release such as the quality, release group and audio and video specs. Movie details on Take.fmTo top it off, users also get a list of recommended titles for the movies they browse. This is similar to the recommendation engines that e-commerce sites such as Amazon have, and with enough contributors this could help users to quickly find related content of interest. Although all of this sounds great, the movie industry wont be cheering the site on. They would argue that it assists in copyright infringements, which are against the law in most countries. Especially since all the files on the site are manually verified, anti-piracy groups might be inclined to take swift action to shut the site down. The Take.fm owner is aware of this risk, but is not planning to back down. “Yes, we expect a lot of legal actions against us, the kind that we already endured with Coda.fm, but with more pressure. However, they couldn’t stop us before, and they won’t succeed now either. I really believe in what we do, and we will do anything it takes to stay online, as long as we have users that enjoy our service.” People unconcerned or unaffected by the legal issues are being encouraged by the site’s owner to help out and join the team. “We just launched and we need collaborators that could help us to increase our catalog and build a community. I would like to use this opportunity to invite users that liked our vision to collaborate, uploading movie torrents and applying for moderators,” he said. All in all we have to say that Take.fm is truly an amazing site, much like its sister site Coda.fm. A site that immediately captures one’s imagination. We have little doubt that this one will be around for a while, if it manages to stay out of legal trouble that is. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| StarCraft 2 and Blizzard’s BitTorrent Paradox Posted: 09 Aug 2010 01:21 PM PDT With hundreds of thousands of unauthorized downloads, StarCraft 2 is the most pirated game of 2010 thus far. Although Blizzard Entertainment is probably not too excited by this honorary title, the company also benefits from BitTorrent. In fact, StarCraft 2 is probably the most legally downloaded game on BitTorrent too.
Unlike with most other games, BitTorrent actually assisted in the record breaking StarCraft 2 sales, since all download copies were distributed through Blizzard’s BitTorrent downloader. The downloader, which was first bundled with a World of Warcraft release, lets users download the game and subsequent patches. By using a BitTorrent-based distribution client, Blizzard ensures that all customers can download the 7 Gigabyte installer at full speed, without having to invest too much in bandwidth and server capacity. This is yet another example of how BitTorrent can help content owners, instead of hurting them. The question that next comes to mind is how many people have used the BitTorrent downloader to grab their copy of StarCraft 2. Since the downloads use a BitTorrent tracker to communicate between peers, we tried to find out. Unfortunately the BitTorrent tracker used by Blizzard doesn’t report seed and leech counts to the public, so we were unable to find out how many people have downloaded the official release via the BitTorrent downloader. However, with the tremendous success of the game, in terms of sales it wouldn’t surprise us if it broke the record for the largest BitTorrent swarm ever. That said, BitTorrent is also the preferred distribution channel for unauthorized copies of StarCraft 2, and much to the disdain of Blizzard these illegitimate downloads have been skyrocketing. The unauthorized copies of the game appeared on BitTorrent almost simultaneously with the official release and close to 100,000 copies were downloaded in the first 24 hours. According to statistics gathered by TorrentFreak, the total number of pirated downloads of StarCraft 2 currently sits at 260,000, with 50,000 people actively sharing the game at the time of publication. This makes StarCraft 2 the most pirated game of 2010 to date. TorrentFreak contacted Blizzard’s PR agencies in the US and Europe last week to get more information on the BitTorrent downloader and the number of downloaded copies, but unfortunately we haven’t heard back from them. Nevertheless, we estimate that StarCraft 2 is both the most pirated and biggest selling game to be distributed via BitTorrent this year. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| Despite Confusion, Village Still Wants Torrent Site Investment Posted: 09 Aug 2010 06:37 AM PDT This weekend the operators of BitTorrent site TorrentReactor announced they had bought a Russian village and renamed it after themselves. As the site is known for its earlier pranks the news was rightly taken with a grain of salt, but despite reports that the scheme needs presidential approval it seems the villagers are still really quite warm to the idea and are welcoming the prospect of investment. TorrentReactor, one of the five most popular torrent sites on the Internet, made a surprising announcement a couple of days ago. The operators said that they had acquired a small town in central Russia known as Gar. To mark the event, Gar was said to have been renamed TorrentReactor. The village, founded in 1958 by a religious group connected to the Russian Orthodox Church, was reportedly bought for 4.5 million rubles ($148,000 or 115,000 euros). TorrentReactor said that the money would be used to re-equip the local school, repair roads and purchase agricultural equipment. Not least the money would bring the village into the Internet age through the introduction of broadband, a wonderful prospect for a place said to have only three computers and a single dial up connection. The TorrentReactor Town – or is it?But those who know TorrentReactor will also be familiar with their sense of humor and earlier pranks. This news concerning the village was quite rightly taken with a grain of salt – or two. After being reported in dozens of Russian news outlets, the claim was investigated by a correspondent at local news outlet Media FM in Tomsk who managed to speak with Tatyana Tolkachev from the Asinovski district where Gar is located. As it turns out, TorrentReactor’s assessment that the village had 214 residents was a little off the mark – it actually has 380. Equally the claim that there are only 3 computers in the area was an underestimate, there are more, and many have Internet access. Furthermore, the notion that the villagers make a living from selling home-grown vegetables in a nearby town possibly painted an overly rustic image of a place which actually has its own fire department, a club, a few shops, a post office and a school which houses 50 students. And, according to administrator Marina Platov, the revelation that her village has been sold and renamed is a surprise to her, but nevertheless, not an unwelcome one. Should an offer be received, Platov said the villagers would not be against it. The roads in and around Gar are very poorly maintained and that 4.5 million rubles would be very helpful, she explained. The TorrentReactor crew, who now feel obligated to help the town out in some shape or form, informed us that renaming the town is not a viable option. “We can’t rename the village, it’s a long story,” founder Alex told TorrentFreak this morning in response. Indeed, according to another report, renaming villages isn’t easy. Although a choice can be made by the villagers, the final decision lies with the President of Russia. So, now that the poor and needy villagers of Gar have become excited at the prospect of some significant investment from a torrent site, what are the TorrentReactor people going to do to stop them becoming disappointed? “We can do other things,” promises Alex. To find out what exactly, we have to wait until tomorrow. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
Every year hundreds of new torrent sites are launched, but only a few of these manage to rise to the top. Take.fm is one of these newcomers, and since it has something unique to offer it is likely to stick around.
The highly anticipated release of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty has become a 
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