TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Torrent Site Thanks 4chan For DDoSing Anti-Piracy Outfit
- Top BitTorrent Trackers Face Major Downtime
- BitTorrent-Only Horror Movie Denied IMDb Listing
- The Pirate Bay Appeal Day 2: Lost Sales
| Torrent Site Thanks 4chan For DDoSing Anti-Piracy Outfit Posted: 30 Sep 2010 02:44 AM PDT Today, ICTorrent, the private tracker which was recently revealed to be a DDoS target of anti-piracy company AiPlex Software, celebrates its birthday. On this occasion the site gives thanks to 4chan activists for helping to bring the attacks to an end while showing TorrentFreak that pirate movies the site watermarked with its own logo have been turning up on national TV.
The site, which specializes in Asian content, was reported and confirmed to be a target for an Indian anti-piracy company with an unconventional approach to enforcement. AiPlex Software had admitted to carrying out DDoS attacks for movie companies against ICTorrent (something it later denied) but the suspicion in the community was that its activities were wider. Word quickly spread that it had also attacked The Pirate Bay and this resulted in the first wave of attacks in Operation Payback, the DDoS attacks carried out by 4chan and their supporters against anti-piracy operations. While AiPlex Software went down in dramatic fashion, ICTorrent remained cheerfully up. According to an admin at the site, all is quiet at the moment. He told us that he’s had no DDoS attacks from AiPlex Software for 2 weeks. It’s perhaps no coincidence that on and off, AiPlex has been under 4chan-inspired DDoS attacks itself for a similar period. “Its just nice to see that there are anti-anti-pirates out there who are ready to fight companies who don’t seem to live by the law,” an ICTorrent admin told TorrentFreak. “I am glad to see that AiPlex got a taste of their own medicine and I would like to support 4chan in any way possible.” Moving on to more light-hearted events, today ICT celebrates its second birthday and on this occasion has shared some interesting screenshots with TorrentFreak. When ICTorrent releases a PDVD (a DVD encoded from an Asian Silver or Telesync source) of a Bollywood movie, they add their own clearly visible watermark to the release which is viewable throughout the movie in the top right hand corner of the screen. The watermark consists on an I and a C (from ICTorrent) which stands for Intellect Clever. However, ‘clever’ might not be a term that could be associated with the producers of an Indian TV movie awards show. Since 2008, when ICTorrent was born, the national TV show has been running with clips of nominated movies culled from an interesting source – ICTorrent PDVDs. The distinctive ‘i’ (for reference see the logo above) can be seen in the screenshots below from an earlier show, just below and to the right of the ‘Sony’ logo (ouch!). Another logo which has appeared regularly on the awards show is that of Cinema Max, another outfit that places watermarks on pirate DVDs. Example below, watermark bottom right of ‘screen’ section. After using ICTorrent sourced movie clips in 2008, 2009 and 2010, it will remain to be seen if 2011 shows the same pattern. However, if AiPlex Software renew their DDoS attacks against the site, the awards show might have a problem getting their fix this time round. To this end, ICTorrent has issued a direct warning to AiPlex not to go back to their old ways. “After the attacks from 9/10 to 9/11 if we receive an another DDoS attack from you we will make sure all the documents sent to us by AiPlex are made public to every single Indian Director and Producer so they know what kind of ridiculous emails you send & the kind of people you have in your company,” the site warns. TorrentFreak has seen some of these documents and they make uncomfortable reading. Let’s see what happens next. To DDoS or not? That is the question. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| Top BitTorrent Trackers Face Major Downtime Posted: 29 Sep 2010 02:42 PM PDT For nearly a week the two largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet have been mostly offline. With the recent DDoS attacks at BitTorrent sites in mind, some feared that both OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent were victims of a similar assault. Although both trackers are indeed overloaded, the origin is friendly fire this time. OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent are two non-commercial BitTorrent trackers running on the beerware licensed Opentracker software. Neither service hosts or links to torrent files and both are free to use by all BitTorrent users. The trackers were listed as number one and two in our latest list of most-used trackers, and both are generally coordinating the downloads of 20 million people at any given point in time. Despite the seemingly neutral setup, OpenBitTorrent has had its fair share of legal issues in the last year. Both Hollywood and the music industry have declared war against what they see as an illegal service. After Hollywood won its case against the former provider of OpenBitTorrent, IFPI went after its new host in Spain, forcing the tracker to move again. Considering this turbulent history, it is no surprise that many users were fearing the worst when OpenBitTorrent became unresponsive last week. However, this time the outages have nothing to do with legal threats. OpenBitTorrentTorrentFreak contacted the operator of the tracker who informed us that the downtime is related to an increasing number of users. The servers are simply overloaded and can’t handle all requests. We were ensured that the problems will be dealt with but it is expected that this might take a few days. As a direct result of the problems at OpenBitTorrent, the only other major tracker PublicBitTorrent had to deal with many extra users, again causing trouble. This week, PublicBitTorrent has been unresponsive for half of the time as their servers are overloaded as well. This is a prime example of how vulnerable the BitTorrent tracker ecosystem is. The operator of PublicBitTorrent told TorrentFreak that extra servers are on the way. Hopefully this will solve the problems, but it is expected to take up to a week before everything’s setup properly. The upside to all the bad news is that most people can still download torrents. Instead of using a tracker, most downloads work fine when they solely rely on DHT and PEX. Hopefully, both trackers will be fully functioning by the end of next week. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| BitTorrent-Only Horror Movie Denied IMDb Listing Posted: 29 Sep 2010 09:33 AM PDT A film set to be released for free via BitTorrent has been denied a listing in the Internet Movie Database. The Tunnel is currently in production and despite pleas from the makers, IMDb won't allow it on their site. The creators of this horror movie believe that because they have shunned an official distributor and chosen a BitTorrent model instead, this has put them at a disadvantage with the Amazon-owned site.
In order to drum up publicity for the forthcoming release, creators Julian Harvey and Enzo Tedeschi (who together form Australia-based Distracted Media) have been trying to get their movie listed on the Internet Movie Database. It has proven to be an impossible task. Last week Enzo contacted TorrentFreak and explained the process he had been going through with IMDb for some time now and his frustrations at getting absolutely nowhere with the Amazon-owned site. Despite being submitted five times, in various correspondence with IMDb the site continually denied The Tunnel a listing. In June, IMDb told the team that if a movie is not set up with a production company with a history of theatrically released movies, getting it listed at the early stages of development would not be possible. However, The Tunnel has backing from Zapruder's Other Films which already have IMDb listings. Undeterred by this setback, the creators decided to have another attempt at a listing once filming proper was underway, but all that resulted in was a further rejection in August. Thanks for your new title addition to IMDb. Our title managers have recently examined the information which you supplied and it appears this title will not qualify for inclusion until it is in an advanced stage of production or completed, sorry. The rejections continued, even though the team providing several trade magazine listings, news articles and other supporting material to show the film is legitimate. Then in September, and despite the Australian Director's Guild recognising the movie's online marketing campaign with an ADG Award nomination, IMDb rejected The Tunnel again saying that they can find no evidence to suggest the movie exists. Enzo told TorrentFreak that he believes that it’s the movie’s distribution model which has caused this reaction from IMDb. The third rejection letter from IMDb says: Hello. Please provide distribution info or evidence it will be released in 2010. Thank you. “Seeing as we announced our distribution plan via torrents, a method that is completely within our control, we can’t see what ‘distribution info’ we could provide,” Enzo told us. “There is no official deal in place to make that happen, as it isn’t controlled by a ‘distributor’ as such. The only conclusion we can reach is that in the absence of a ‘proper’ distributor, they won’t list us.” Enzo believes that either IMDb are being difficult due to the chosen distribution path for The Tunnel, or their review process need to be looked at. Several other movies are listed on the database which don’t meet the site’s criteria (he believes The Tunnel does). “The number of times we have been rejected is absurd, given that we address all major criteria for listing. I’ve helped out on student films over the years that have gone nowhere and have had an easier time getting listed,” he notes. Of course, IMDb is owned by Amazon, so some might put two and two together and say that a BitTorrent distribution model might not be helpful to their business. Interestingly, it seems that the BitTorrent-based movie Pioneer One is also lacking an IMDb listing. That said, with an open letter to IMDb now published by The Tunnel team, maybe they can bridge their differences and come to an amicable solution. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| The Pirate Bay Appeal Day 2: Lost Sales Posted: 29 Sep 2010 05:42 AM PDT The Pirate Bay appeal is moving forward faster than expected. On the second day representatives for the music and movie industries talked about lost sales and revenues they claim can be attributed to The Pirate Bay. In addition, the prosecution uncovered ad sales and money trails to portray The Pirate Bay as a commercial organization.
After this minor interruption the hearing started where it left off yesterday, with prosecutor Håkan Roswall presenting more evidence to the Court regarding ad revenues and other financial transactions that involve the defendants. Roswall showed emails and bank statements which he claims proves that all defendants received money for their involvement with The Pirate Bay. Most, if not all of the information that is being brought up has already been discussed in the District Court hearings last year, and it is assumed that the prosecutor is trying to label The Pirate Bay as a commercial operation. Several advertising deals were discussed, most of which involve an Israeli businessman and his advertising company. Aside from ad revenue, Roswall also discussed the money trail behind the servers that were bought for The Pirate Bay. Roswall then went on to explain the various tasks the defendants fulfilled according to his claims. Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik were the main programmers. Peter Sunde is seen as a general ‘office manager’ who coordinated the programming and helped with optimizing the database, layout and search of The Pirate Bay. In addition, Sunde was involved in contracting advertisers. The fourth defendant, Carl Lundstrom, was a financer and was involved in strategic planning according to Roswall. After the prosecutor finished, Peter Danowsky of music industry group IFPI took the stand. His introduction caused a few chuckles in the audience as Roswall mispronounced IFPI and introduced him as a member of the “International Federation of the Pornographic Industry.” Danowsky asked the Appeal Court for extensive damages to compensate the record labels he represents for claimed losses. The defendants willingly ignored copyright law and allowed users to freely share copyrighted music, he said. The Pirate Bay’s download counters were used as evidence to show how many albums were downloaded. According to Danowsky, the damages claimed from The Pirate Bay are the same as if the site had 'legally' obtained licenses to distribute the music world-wide, regardless of whether all the downloaders had later decided to buy the music or not. Effectively, he is trying to say that one download equals one lost sale. Danowsky further argued that for some recordings the damages per infringement should be significantly higher. Beatles albums are given as an example because the band’s music isn’t available legally online. This is an interesting argument, since there would be no need to download these albums if they were available online. Music that is shared before the official release date should also receive greater compensation, he argued. After Danowsky finished talking, Henrik Ponten – representative of the movie studios – issued his claims. Ponten stated that he will detail the request for damages next week when Bertil Sandgren, a board member of the Swedish film institute, is scheduled to testify. The hearing continued after a lunch break with Monique Wadsted, representing the U.S. movie industry. She explained how The Pirate Bay can be used to transfer large files quickly. She further noted that it is very easy for the operators to delete a torrent file, but that the defendants nonetheless chose not to remove any infringing files. Wadsted further stated that The Pirate Bay is not a ‘passive’ site. The categories, which have been ‘actively’ put up by The Pirate Bay’s operators, make it easier for users to find torrents. She further reiterated what the prosecution has already said, claiming that the defendants earned a significant amount of money, up to 35 million Swedish krona according to an expert report. Wadsted concluded by saying that the movie studios want compensation for the titles in the lawsuit, but also damages for the losses the industry suffered in general due to The Pirate Bay. She said that The Pirate Bay makes it harder for copyright holders to recoup their investments in films. The last one and a half hours of the day were for the defense team, starting with Jonas Nilsson, Fredrik Neij’s lawyer. Nilsson rejected most of the prosecution’s claims and started by refuting the claim that the majority of the torrents on The Pirate Bay point to copyrighted material. The lawyer said that the opposite is true. The lawyer continued by stating that his client has three objections to the indictment. Firstly, The Pirate bay is merely a search engine and does not store any copyrighted material. Besides, Neij is not aware of all the content that can be downloaded via the site, so he cannot be seen as aiding or abetting copyright infringements. Lastly, The Pirate Bay is a transmission instead of a hosting service, meaning that under the E-Commerce Directive the operators can’t be held responsible for the actions of the site’s users. Nilsson continued by saying that Fredrik Neij was not involved in founding the site, but that he merely agreed to help out on the technical side. The Pirate Bay itself was never a commercial operation and all the proceeds went to investments in hardware and other technical equipment. The defense lawyer further said that the purpose of The Pirate Bay website is to share files, not to infringe copyrights. Users interact with the site automatically and the people who are operating the site are not involved in the actual file-transfers or the uploading of .torrent files to the site. BitTorrent as a file-sharing protocol is perfectly legal, Nilsson stated. Nilsson then went back to the E-Commerce Directive, stating the the operators of The Pirate Bay never changed or edited any torrent files, because they are not considered to be liable for what users share. Under the Directive the site should be seen as merely a transmission service, not a hosting platform, he argued. The last speaker of the day was Peter Sunde’s lawyer Peter Althin, who spoke for twenty minutes. He refuted the claim of the prosecution that his client was actively operating the website. Sunde did have contact with the Israeli businessman who handled the advertisements, but that was because he was contacted as a spokesperson of the site when others were too busy to respond. Althin further said that The Pirate Bay is not engaging in criminal activity, and even if the court decides otherwise, his client should be acquitted because he was acting merely as a spokesperson. Sunde appeared in the press many times as a representative of the site, but was never responsible for the financing, programming or other daily operations. Finally, Althin noted that the plaintiffs have not suffered any financial damage that can be attributed to The Pirate Bay, contrary to what the prosecution has claimed today and yesterday. That concluded the second day. Thus far the trial is mostly a repeat of the District Court hearings. Everything seems to be going smoothly and the hearing may conclude sooner than expected. The trial continues on Friday. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
After two years of doing their thing fairly quietly, a few weeks ago private BitTorrent tracker 
There is little conventional about the funding, creation and distribution model chosen by the makers of The Tunnel. Currently in production, this movie is being 
The second day of the trial began with the announcement that Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij is not present because he hadn’t slept much the previous night. According to Neij’s lawyer he has been under the weather lately. He is trying to get some more sleep before coming to the court room.| You are subscribed to email updates from TorrentFreak To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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