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Piracy Is Promotion, Says CEO of Porn Multinational
Pirate Party Strikes Hosting Deal With Wikileaks
Fox Drives a Stake Through ‘Vampires Suck’ Workprint

Piracy Is Promotion, Says CEO of Porn Multinational

Posted: 18 Aug 2010 04:59 AM PDT

Adult entertainment and piracy go hand in hand, so to speak. While some players in the industry use legal tools to bring piracy to a halt, others are not bothered about unauthorized sharing. In a recent video interview the CEO of one of the largest porn distributors said that the more people pirate his company's work, the better.

Private Media Group, one of the largest adult entertainment companies and the first one that’s publicly traded on NASDAQ, has seen many new opportunities appear with the emergence of the Internet. However, it also has to deal with the many streaming and torrent sites where their material is shared freely.

Unlike other adult entertainment companies that sue individual downloaders or site operators, Private Media Group CEO Berth Milton is not going to put up a fight. On the contrary, he believes that piracy is a good thing as it serves as a promotional tool.

"We will be extremely happy the more people are pirating our content and the more they look at it," Milton said in a recent interview with NewTeeVee.

An unusual comment for someone who heads one of the largest adult entertainment multinationals, but not a complete surprise considering the history of the company. In 2002, Private Media Group was the owner of Napster for a short while, before it was taken over by Roxio which turned it into a legal pay service.

Milton believes that entertainment companies should look beyond piracy, and explore alternatives business models as the battle against piracy is one that can’t be won.

"I think it's a lost battle," Milton said, adding: "I look at my own kids, because that's the best way to know where the market is going. It doesn't matter if I tell them that it is illegal to download. As soon as they close the door to their room, they download."

“They are not afraid of someone who’s tracking their IP-address. They just don’t care, Milton said. “It’s a new world and we have to accept it.”

According to Private’s CEO, companies like his should use the enormous amount of traffic piracy generates. Give everything away for free and sell goods to those visitors that are harder to pirate.

In the video Milton says that his company will focus more on selling the ‘private lifestyle’ which includes luxurious vacations with an adult theme, and toys and tools that may come in handy while reenacting pirated videos.

With slow progress on human cloning and the 3D-printer, Milton’s bet on selling the sex ‘experience’ rather than videos seems to be a safe one for now.

Berth Milton

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Pirate Party Strikes Hosting Deal With Wikileaks

Posted: 17 Aug 2010 11:32 AM PDT

During his visit to the the Swedish capital Stockholm, Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange struck a deal with the local Pirate Party. The Party, which participates in the national elections next month, will host several new Wikileaks servers to protect the freedom of the press and help the whistleblower site to carry out its operation.

After releasing more than 90,000 government documents last month related to the war in Afghanistan, Wikileaks was labeled a serious threat by the U.S. Government. With more leaks coming up, Wikileaks can use all the support it can get, especially from political movements around the globe.

One of the political parties that has shown interest in helping Wikileaks is the Swedish Pirate Party. Two weeks ago they offered to host the whistleblower site, and during a visit to Sweden Wikileaks’ Julian Assange accepted this offer and signed a deal.

“I’m delighted that we’re able to help WikiLeaks,” Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak in a response to the news that was made public today.

“I love opportunities to demonstrate that one of the biggest differences between us and the other parties is that we positively leap at any and all changes to take real responsibility for changing the world, rather than just commission reports and avoiding blame like the archetypal politician,” Falkvinge added.

Assange and Falkvinge sign the hosting agreement

wiki

For Wikileaks, support from the Swedish Pirate Party is a significant win. If the Party is voted into Parliament next month it could use Parliamentary immunity to run the site from inside the Swedish Government, making it impossible to take it offline through legal procedures.

“We welcome the help provided by the Pirate Party,” Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange said commenting on the agreement. “Our organisations share many values and I am looking forward to future ways we can help each other improve the world.”

Aside from hosting, Assange also hopes that the new Swedish Parliament will assist the site in other ways. Passing legislation that guarantees press freedom so Wikileaks and similar operations can do their work freely, is high on his wish list.

“We hope that the new Parliament will give serious consideration to further strengthening Sweden’s press protection legislation. Western democracies are not always as free as one might think, and freedom of the press needs constant vigilance,” Assange said.

“In particular, we would welcome Sweden copying Iceland’s Modern Media Initiative, something that the Pirate Party also desires.”

Assange and Falkvinge shaking hands

wiki

Pirate Party leader Falkvinge further stressed the importance of Wikileaks’ work, which has been sabotaged by corrupt or abusive organizations that try to conceal the truth from the public. “We desire to contribute to any effort that increases transparency and accountability of power in the world,” he said.

Assange on his turn recognized that his organization is fighting for much of the same ideals as the Pirate Party, and said that there might be more joint projects between the two outfits in the future. “We see more opportunities down the road in cooperating with the Pirate Party and look forward to exploring those options,” Assange noted.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Fox Drives a Stake Through ‘Vampires Suck’ Workprint

Posted: 17 Aug 2010 06:03 AM PDT

An unfinished copy of the upcoming Vampires Suck movie has been making the rounds on BitTorrent recently. Despite's efforts from Fox to prevent people from taking a sneak peak at this upcoming Twilight parody, a leaked and possibly unfinished workprint version has been downloaded tens of thousands of times already.

vampires suck It is no secret that every Hollywood production eventually ends up on BitTorrent, sometimes a few hours after it premieres in theaters and usually no longer than a few days. For this very reason movie leaks are hardly noticeable, but this changes when an unfinished copy of a movie appears online weeks before the official release date.

Last year this happened with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Three long weeks before the official premiere in the movie theaters an unfinished copy (Workprint) appeared online, and in advance of its release over a million people had already downloaded it via BitTorrent.

20th Century Fox wasn't happy with this global sneak preview and asked the FBI and MPAA to investigate the case. This investigation eventually led to the arrest of a scapegoat, but the original leaker was never caught. Now, a year on from the Wolverine drama, Fox is again up in arms about a leaked and potentially unfinished movie.

Little over a month ago a workprint copy of Vampires Suck was uploaded to various torrent sites by the P2P release group KiNGDOM. This time around Fox wisely kept quiet about the leak. Behind the scenes, however, Fox’s legal department has been sending numerous takedown requests to torrent sites and Google. Interestingly, some of the URLs that were sent to Google are links to fake copies of the movie.

Vampires Suck, a parody of the popular Twilight series, premieres in the United States and Canada tomorrow, but despite Fox’s efforts the movie has already been downloaded over 100,000 times. According to commenters, the quality of of the audio and video is more than decent and the film appears to be complete, although one can not be sure if the scenes in the workprint will all be in the actual film.

It is not unlikely that Fox will be trying to find the source of the leak once again, and the first leads are presented to them by KiNGDOM. “Got this from a friend blurred the needed areas for security reasons and cropped others. It came in 5 reels at the beginning of each there was a countdown till the reel started so I had to cut them out too, as for filtering I did the normal,” we read in the release notes.

Whether the leak will end up hurting the success of the movie in the long run or not is open for debate. It might, if those who have downloaded the film don't end up seeing it in the movie theater or on DVD, where they originally planned to do so. On the other hand, the leak might lead to some additional press coverage and thus serve as a useful promotional tool.

Screenshot taken from the leaked Workprint

vampires suck

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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