Wednesday, October 20, 2010

TorrentFreak Email Update

TorrentFreak Email Update


The Death of ACTA

Posted: 20 Oct 2010 02:17 AM PDT

For the last two years the spectre of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA as it's better known, has loomed large on the horizon. For many the Treaty stands as a threat and is synonymous with corporate control of the man in the street and his creativity. After becoming popular with filesharers through his open letter songs to Lily Allen and Peter Mandelson, today Dan Bull is back with a TorrentFreak interview and his brand new track D.O.A.C.T.A - Death of ACTA.

death of actaAlthough he has been hard at work and getting good reviews in both local and national media for some time, UK-based one-man music machine Dan Bull really hit the Internet conciousness in September 2009.

After Lily Allen stirred up a file-sharing hornet’s nest with her anti-piracy rhetoric, Dan put together ‘Dear Lily‘. This open letter received several hundred thousand views on YouTube alone and a month later Dan followed it up with a dressing down of Peter Mandelson over the Digital Economy Act.

In recognition of his ability to connect with an audience, Midlands-based Dan was soon commissioned by ISP TalkTalk to create a track to protest against the proposed disconnection of file-sharers.

Now, just over 6 months later he’s back again with a brand new track. ACTA is in the spotlight this time and as usual, Dan takes his subject matter apart with insightful and often biting lyrics delivered with expert clarity and timing.

But before we get our first taste of the track D.O.A.C.T.A (Death of ACTA) with its accompanying video, here is Dan with some thoughts on the Treaty.

TF: What are your feelings on how ACTA has developed and where it appears to be going?

Dan: ACTA is being worked on behind closed doors, in a totally undemocratic fashion. What we’ve seen so far is very worrying though. It’s clearly been put together by people who don’t know or care how the internet works. Not only that, but it means that you can be punished for a newly created crime without any evidence that you’ve committed it. Just an accusation from an industry lawyer is enough – and we’ve already seen with ACS Law how irresponsible and inaccurate they are. Do we really want companies like ACS Law given the power of judge, jury and executioner?

However, it’s not too late to contact your representatives in government – start putting the pressure on and let them know this kind of secret, unelected and irresponsible policy making is unacceptable.

TF: Do you think that ACTA will actually change anything?

Dan: It’s not going to change things in the way it’s meant to. Filesharing and piracy will carry on as before – the law is always one step behind technology. The only thing ACTA will do is stifle innovation and communication. How could sites like YouTube and Flickr exist if the owners of those sites are held liable for everything their users upload? It’s like saying that Bic is responsible if someone writes a death threat using one of their pens. It’s a load of bollocks.

The funny thing is that the entertainment industry is only a fraction of the size of the technology and communications industry. Yet this tiny sector is managing to force through ridiculously backward protectionist laws that make things harder for everyone else except themselves.

TF: How do you feel that the people will respond to ACTA’s introduction?

Dan: I can’t imagine there are many people outside the entertainment industry who support it. In fact I’m surprised the technology sector hasn’t rallied together to fight against it. People who don’t know the facts about it should be told, and people who know the facts should be gravely concerned.

TF: Do you think that legislation has the ability to mould and control people’s behavior and creativity?

Dan: Yes, but only in useless ways. Filesharers won’t be swayed, they’ll just find other ways to carry on doing what they were doing before. ACTA is going to damage creativity though – pretty much all creative work is derivative of previous work, so by criminalising copyright infringement, ACTA will bring us into a ridiculous situation where all artists are criminals. Even walking to work whilst whistling a tune you heard on the radio is technically an unauthorised performance of a copyrighted work, and once ACTA is in place, it’s a crime you could theoretically go to prison for.

TF: Tell us a little about the video that accompanies the song.

Dan: The video was filmed at The Golden Hinde in London, which is a replica of Sir Francis Drake’s ship. My friend Russ Houghton came up with the pirate ship concept, and also produced and directed the video, with the help of a couple of his colleagues, who work in television. Thanks very much to them for helping out.

TF: Cheers for chatting with us Dan, keep up the good work.

The MP3 of D.O.A.C.T.A can be downloaded here and you can follow Dan on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Beer money gratefully accepted here, along with any spare Flattrs.

The Death of ACTA

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Filmmaker Schools Pirates On Correct Way To Rip His DVD

Posted: 19 Oct 2010 01:32 PM PDT

Most days the news surrounding torrent sites, the scene and piracy is dominated by lawsuits, busts and other negative stories. But every now and then there is a ray of light that brightens the day. Today we bring you the story of a filmmaker who didn't complain when he saw that his film was being pirated. Instead he helped a scene release group to improve the ripped copy of his DVD.

Jason Scott is not your average filmmaker. As the creator of textfiles.com, which hosts archive files from historic bulletin board systems (BBS), he has documented the Internet’s first steps into file-sharing.

Scott’s filmmaking is equally technology oriented. In 2005 BBS: The Documentary made its debut, and 5 years later this was followed by the interactive fiction (text adventures) film GEt Lamp. The latter documentary was released in July 2010, and in common with most films nowadays it has also been ‘pirated’.

The scene release group FLAiR released their DVDRip of lamp just a few days ago, and what followed was an interesting and highly unusual ‘conversation’ between the filmmaker and FLAiR.

Get Lamp 2010 DVDRip XviD-FLAiRget lamp

A story like this is best told by the people involved of course, so let’s skip to the good part. It started with the flattering description of Jason Scott in the NFO file released by FLAiR together with the DVDrip of Get Lamp.

Jason Scott is a pretty damn awesome guy. For 12 years he has run textfiles.com, an irreplaceable library of well over fifty thousand textfiles, collected from the golden era of human kind, the 1980s. Before the dawn of the World Wide Web, unless you belonged to the exclusive group that had Internet access through your university, your primary source of information would be such textfiles, downloaded from your local BBS. Usenet, Gopher, Archie, none could measure up to the popularity of the BBS.

Not only did FLAiR make it clear that they are fans of Scott’s work, they also encouraged downloaders to buy the full DVD of the film. For this very reason the scene release group explicitly left out the DVD extras from their release.

As is common with Jason Scott releases, the DVD is packed with extras, yet we've chosen to include none of them. Why? Because he deserves your money, that's why! Because there's no greedy corporation behind this, no corrupt distributor, no MPAA no nothing. Because this guy curses digital data lobotomy as much as you do, because he *let* you download this film, because we wanna see what he's able to do next. If you only buy a single DVD this year, let it be this one.

The comments from FLAiR didn’t go unnoticed by Jason Scott, who described them as “heartwarming” in a recent blog post titled “To My Esteemed Colleages at FLAiR.” However, Scott wasn’t too happy about all aspects of the release, and wrote the following.

I've just downloaded the torrent, and while the image quality and sound quality is excellent, you've made a mistake.

The DVD, as I've mentioned before, is interactive with a non-interactive version as well. To accomplish this and save space on the DVD (since it's packed with stuff), I have a set of discrete tracks that are either summoned (via the interactive choice) or played as a playlist (via the non-interactive choice). Unintentionally (and I do really mean it, it was unintentional), this has made the movie a tad harder to rip, because the movie is in pieces scattered throughout the DVD, and not in any obvious sequential order.

Playing the AVI that FLAiR has released shows that you have ripped only some of the tracks, and ripped one extra one that shouldn't be in there.

Scott then pointed out what the correct order of the scenes should be. In addition, he pointed out that as an appreciation for his efforts a ‘fix’ from FLAiR might be in order. After all, they ruined his creative work.

While, again, I am pleased you wrote such kind things about me, this mixed-up version makes it look like I made a flawed DVD with doubled scenes, and takes away the entire puzzle sequence, which I am rather proud of.

Please fix, if you can

And so it happened. FLAiR read Scott’s comments and yesterday they came out with a Repack of the DVDRip, fixing the mistakes that were pointed out to them by the filmmaker. In addition, they offered an apology.

Sorry for screwing up your film – we really didn’t mean to, and you deserve better. Please accept our apologies, along with this repack, which should restore the missing bits, and put things back in order. Hope we got it right this time, but if not, by all means do let us know.

Get Lamp can be downloaded for free at most torrent sites near you. Since it’s released under a Creative Commons Share-alike license you’re not breaking any laws by downloading it either. Those who want to have the full experience and all the awesome extras can order a DVD through the official site.

Get Lamp Trailer

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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