TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Sensing Danger, Demonoid BitTorrent Tracker Ditches .COM Domain
- RapidShare Gets 150,000 Euro Copyright Infringement Fine
- Tubeify: A ‘Historic’ Mashup of Last.fm, Billboard and YouTube
| Sensing Danger, Demonoid BitTorrent Tracker Ditches .COM Domain Posted: 02 Dec 2010 02:47 AM PST Demonoid, one of the most prominent BitTorrent sites on the Internet, is ditching its .COM domain. In an announcement today the world's biggest semi-private tracker says it will move to a .ME domain with immediate effect. The move comes as no surprise since both the MPAA and RIAA listed Demonoid in their recent submissions of "notorious markets" for pirate material.
Many sites – including the Torrent-Finder meta-search engine, the first torrent site to have its domain seized – believed they operate legally, either under US law via compliance with the DMCA or in the countries from where they are hosted or operated. Last week’s actions changed all that, with the authorities labelling sites like Torrent-Finder “criminal” with no arrests, no trial, and to the outside world, very little due process. Indeed, the government gave no explanation at all why a search engine should appear among a list of sites offering physical counterfeit goods, other than that the entertainment industries asked for it to be there. No surprise then that some of the Internet’s largest BitTorrent and other file-sharing related sites have been assessing their position during the last week and pondering strategies to neutralize this new threat. Today brings an announcement from Demonoid, the world’s biggest semi-private BitTorrent tracker. Since its inception, Demonoid has been available using the .COM TLD (top-level domain) but following the action from DHS and ICE, they’re now severing their links to US control. “We are in the process of migrating the site to our new address, Demonoid.ME,” said the site’s owner in an announcement today. “Please update your torrents to the new tracker address, inferno.demonoid.me. Additionally, you can re download them and get them with the new address automatically Also, don’t forget to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds.” Anyone familiar with the BitTorrent world will know that despite its semi-private status, Demonoid hardly flies under the radar when it comes to profile. Indeed, the tracker has been under increasing pressure recently. Both the RIAA and MPAA mentioned the site in their submissions (1) (2) to the Office of the US Trade Representative which claim to list the world’s most "notorious markets" for copyright infringing material. While news of at least half a dozen alternative DNS systems has appeared during the last week (including the BitTorrent-based Dot-P2P) to counter domain seizures, TorrentFreak has learned that most of the larger torrent sites are securing new domains in preparation for future US Government action which seems not just likely under COICA, but almost certain. In a relatively rare event, today Demonoid is open for registration. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| RapidShare Gets 150,000 Euro Copyright Infringement Fine Posted: 01 Dec 2010 12:54 PM PST Earlier this year, cyberlocker service RapidShare was ordered by a court to remove nearly 150 electronic books from its archives and prevent users from re-uploading them by implementing a filter. According to the publishers who brought the case, RapidShare quickly breached the injunction. Today, the Regional Court of Hamburg agreed and hit the file-hosting company with a 150,000 euro fine.
Listing 148 titles to which these publishers hold the copyrights, the lawsuit demanded that RapidShare stop making available to the public user-uploaded versions of these books via its service. On February 10th 2010, the District Court in Hamburg issued a preliminary ruling against RapidShare. The Court ordered the file-hoster to stop making available electronic versions of the text books within 7 days by removing all current titles and monitoring user uploads to ensure no more were uploaded. Failure to do so would result in the company being subjected to a fine of up to 250,000 euros. However, according to the publishers who conducted searches of the RapidShare archives after the injunction was issued, most of the titles in the lawsuit remained available. With evidence of the breach of the injunction in hand, they asked the Court to impose fines. Today, the Regional Court of Hamburg upheld a fine of 150,000 euros for breaching the injunction. The Court stated that RapidShare “…culpably failed to take reasonable examination and control measures. These measures include the utilization of a word filter, which checks the file name during the uploading of files to the servers of [Rapidshare] with regard to whether the author, the title, the ISBN number of the publisher may be contained in this name.” RapidShare was also ordered by the Court to install a word filter for new user uploads and is also “required to search the relevant popular external link libraries for links to files with the works in dispute.” Dr. Ursula Feindor-Schmidt, an attorney representing the publishers, said that the measures imposed by the Court provide the necessary mechanisms to prevent copyright infringement on the titles detailed in the injunction and to “prevent businesses like Rapidshare from profiting from unauthorized access to and illegal distribution of copyrighted works.” Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| Tubeify: A ‘Historic’ Mashup of Last.fm, Billboard and YouTube Posted: 01 Dec 2010 10:06 AM PST Increasingly, people have started using YouTube as an instant music player. Although the experience is okay for single tracks, it is hardly the music video jukebox most people would love to see. This is where Tubeify comes in, a brand new mashup of Last.fm, Billboard and Youtube, suited for both casual listeners and musical time travellers.
The advanced search capabilities and outstanding usability makes it without a doubt one of the best YouTube jukeboxes around. One of the true gems is the Billboard “timetravel” feature, allowing users to pull up the Billboard chart for any week since 1964 and listen to the tracks that were leading the charts then. Tubeify is an idea from Tomas Isdal, a University of Washington PhD student who TorrentFreak readers may remember from BitTorrent related research projects such as OneSwarm and the DMCA printer study. However, Tubeify is not a research project, but one that aims to turn YouTube into a decent music player. “I came up with the idea roughly a year ago when YouTube signed an agreement with Time Warner, which meant that they now have license agreements with the “Big 4″ labels,” Tomas Isdal told TorrentFreak. “At the same time I noticed that I increasingly used YouTube for music listening, but that the YouTube interface really wasn’t what I wanted.” Isdal told us that, among other things, he was annoyed by several issues on YouTube including the fact that videos stop when you search for another song, that many duplicate clips appear in the search results, and that the playlist has poor functionality. The upside, however, is that YouTube has a huge archive of music with many (un)licensed tracks. So, Isdal took up the challenge to come up with a better YouTube player, with help from Billboard and Last.fm. Tubeify in action“In Tubeify I tried to make it feel more like a traditional desktop music player, think iTunes or Spotify, but still web-based so you can use it anywhere. Then I fixed the annoying parts of YouTube and added stuff that I always wanted in a music player,” he said. The result is a pretty useful mashup of Last.fm, Billboard and YouTube. Tubeify’s searching is handled by the Last.fm api, and unlike on YouTube the current track will continue to play while searching. Search results are treated as “lazy playlists” which can be “pinned” to the sidebar for easy access later. Adding songs to playlists and the play queue is also pretty easy with full drag and drop support. Another feature that beats most existing services is that it allows users to share playlists with friends. Playlist links can be shared anywhere – just paste the link on Twitter, Facebook or in an email and your friends will have instant access to it. Time travel with TubifyAnother great feature of Tubeify are the top charts that are included, and the ability to pull up charts from previous years, all the way back to 1964. This functionality is powered by Billboard’s API and allows users check out, and play, what was topping the charts decades ago. Although Tubeify is obviously not the best music listening experience there is, it is one of the only music video Jukeboxes that lets you search for and play millions of tracks instantly. If anything, it beats using the traditional YouTube interface. Tubeify was kind enough to exclusively share an unlimited amount of invites for TorrentFreak users, that will be handed out for as long as the server holds up. You can get your invite here (should arrive in a few minutes), no strings attached. No user account or password is needed either, but Tubeify does require a Facebook or Google account, to allow users to login securely. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
There can be little doubt that last week’s 
On February 4th 2010, a group of large book publishers 
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