TorrentFreak Email Update |
- Movie Group Will DDoS The Courts To Have File-Sharing Laws Weakened
- What.CD BitTorrent Tracker Breaks A Million Torrents
- Spain Rejects Proposed Legislation to Shutdown P2P Sites
| Movie Group Will DDoS The Courts To Have File-Sharing Laws Weakened Posted: 23 Dec 2010 03:01 AM PST A movie interests association has just announced an interesting new strategy. Having previously focused on having The Pirate Bay blocked in their home country, ACAPOR - which recently had its emails leaked by Operation Payback - says it will now make legal history by reporting unprecedented numbers of file-sharers to the authorities. Their aim? To have the law for infringements made less severe. In September this year, movie rental association ACAPOR filed a complaint against The Pirate Bay with the General Inspection of Cultural Activities, a department of the Portuguese Ministry of Culture. Blaming the site for 15 million illegal downloads in Portugal every year, ACAPOR demanded that the country’s ISPs should take similiar action to that taken in Italy, and block The Pirate Bay. In a parallel action, a complaint was also made against Piratatuga.net, a file-sharing site which has proven extremely popular among their countrymen, also blamed for millions of downloads. In this case a criminal investigation was requested. But having taken action against the sites that facilitate the transfers undertaken by file-sharers, ACAPOR – which recently had its email database hacked as part of Operation Payback – is now widening its approach somewhat. Starting in January 2011, the movie interests group will begin reporting thousands of file-sharers to the authorities. Their aim? To have punishments for file-sharing made less severe. According to ACAPOR president Nuno Pereira, only one case has been brought against a Portuguese file-sharer. He believes that this restrained approach is down to the justice system being afraid of the 3 year jail sentences currently on the books for the offense. Calling the current system “outdated”, Pereira is calling for Portuguese law to be changed to follow the French lead of a graduated response. “It would be better to replace the prison sentence, which is never enforced and that is excessive, for a breach or a cut in Internet access, like they do in France,” he explained. Pereira also says that if the current law was applied as required, the criminal courts would become inundated with case of illegal file-sharing. So, in order to ‘help’ the situation, Pereira has announced a new ACAPOR strategy of – wait for it – inundating the criminal courts with cases of illegal file-sharing. Starting January 5th 2011, ACAPOR will begin filing “the largest collection of criminal complaints submitted simultaneously in the history of Portuguese Justice” against individuals alleged to have shared movies online. “From that day on, every month we will file 1,000 new complaints,” said Pereira, adding that although file-sharing is a crime in Portugal, ACAPOR is being forced to act privately because their complaints to the government have come to nothing. Will the justice system be able to keep up with what is in effect a Denial of Service attack on the courts? Almost certainly not. But this stunt appears to be less about justice and more about pressuring the government and generating publicity to scare potential file-sharers. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| What.CD BitTorrent Tracker Breaks A Million Torrents Posted: 22 Dec 2010 01:03 PM PST What.CD is not your ordinary BitTorrent tracker. The three year old site is most of all a community of audiophiles and music fanatics, and one that has built one of the largest music catalogues that ever existed. Today, What.CD saw the upload of its millionth torrent, an absolute record for a private BitTorrent tracker. TorrentFreak discusses this milestone with the site's founder, who is far from done.
"I felt sick to my stomach all morning," was how What.CD co-founder 'WhatMan’ described his reaction on hearing the news. "We plan to grow into a large tracker – probably not as large as OiNK, and not as open, but eventually I would like to support at least a hundred thousand users," he added. And so it happened. What.CD was founded and thousands of OiNK refugees soon started to populate the site with tens of thousands of torrents. In the three years that followed, What.CD outgrew its predecessor by a wide margin, which went beyond the expectations of the site’s founders. “The original plan for What.CD was to be a worthy replacement for OiNK,” WhatMan told TorrentFreak today. “When I was on OiNK, I thought it was perfect – I figured that the community, content, and quality were unbeatable. What.CD was originally a place for OiNK refugees to hide out, and I dreamed of the site one day hosting as much content as OiNK did.” This dream came true, and today What.CD celebrated the 1 millionth uploaded torrent, a mind boggling number especially for a private BitTorrent tracker. However, the uniqueness of this collection doesn’t just exist in impressive numbers, but in the variety and completeness of the catalogue. “Nowadays, What.CD tracks over four times as much content as OiNK did at its peak. I’m fairly certain that it’s the largest collection of free music on the internet, and the community helps to keep the content plentiful, of high quality, and exquisitely organized,” WhatMan told us, adding: “If you’re looking for a specific master of an album in a specific format, I would be very surprised if you can’t find it extremely easily on What.CD.” The site’s userbase is quite different from that of the average BitTorrent tracker, the co-founder told us. What.CD users are audiophiles and music lovers, with musical tastes that are quite distinct from the most downloaded tracks on the majority of BitTorrent sites. “The What.CD community isn’t a bunch of stereotypical casual pirates who download top 40 songs to put on their ipods. What.CD is comprised mainly of music fanatics – those who really care about their music and its quality – ie. those who think of music not as entertainment, but as art.” “There aren’t many places for these people to go – legitimate download stores don’t offer our level of quality, and CDs are prohibitively expensive for most audiophiles to build a satisfyingly large collection. So they end up here, and form the backbone of our community.”
“It gives me great pleasure to see other trackers running on our code. By releasing the Gazelle frontend and the Ocelot tracker, our goal was to make it easier for admins to run large sites and for users to download content. When I see the number of successful Gazelle sites, I know that we’ve at least partially succeeded.” Like any other popular tracker, public or private, What.CD also runs into legal issues with copyright holders. The site has had to relocate to new hosting services due to music industry complaints, and more recently the IFPI has been trying to deprive the site of its income by cutting off the tracker’s donation processing services. “We do occasionally have legal issues. Our main problem lately has been with donation processing services – every time we get a new method of accepting donations, the IFPI is very fast to send threatening emails to the service and cut off our revenue stream. It’s very difficult to find a payment processing service which will offer us the privacy and protection we need.” The What.CD team understands that is is impossible for the site is to fly under the radar, which it never did. However, they are confident that these issues can be dealt with and that they can focus on improving the functionality of the site to keep the community and site thriving. “Needless to say, we plan on continuing to survive – we’ve worked too long and too hard to lose the site now. I’d also like the site to expand to contain music from non-English speaking cultures, and become a haven for audiophiles from all corners of the globe,” WhatMan told TorrentFreak. What.CD, it seems, is here to stay. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
| Spain Rejects Proposed Legislation to Shutdown P2P Sites Posted: 22 Dec 2010 07:12 AM PST The Spanish House of Representatives has rejected new legislation under which hundreds of file-sharing sites that are currently perfectly legal, could have been shut down. The rejection is a major victory for the tens of thousands of Internet users who launched many protests in recent months. Conversely, the news will come as a disappointment to proponents of the legislation, including the entertainment industries and the U.S. Government. Traditionally, Spain has been one of the few countries where courts have affirmed that P2P-sites operate legally. In an attempt to change this, the Spanish Government recently proposed new legislation under which sites offering links to copyright works could be taken offline without a judicial order. The legislation, an amendment which is part of the Sustainable Economy Law (LES), was drafted by Minister of Culture Ángeles González-Sinde and assisted by the United States Government. However, in recent months the proposed legislation, also known as ‘The Sinde Act’, has been widely protested by the public. In a final attempt to get the amendment rejected, the country’s leading file-sharing sites went down voluntarily this week. Just hours later it became apparent that the public protests had not been in vain. After a lengthy debate the House of Representatives decided to adopt the Sustainable Economy Law, but reject the controversial amendment. The law will now go to the Senate without the amendment that would allow for the shutdown of P2P sites. This decision of the House of Representatives was celebrated as a clear victory for the public. “The will of the people has put an end to the pressure imposed by lobbyists, embassies and foreign governments on our representatives.” the association of Internet users wrote in a response to the good news. “And this victory has shown something else: that democracy and the rule of law are not guaranteed. They must be earned every day and minute by minute, because if people are not concerned to defend these things, nobody will do it for them,” the association added. Representatives of the entertainment industries have voiced their disappointment in the press. The president of anti-piracy organization Promusicae regretted the decision of the Government and said that the creative industry has been left for dead, while file-sharing ‘thieves’ get protection. For the Minister of Culture, the failure to get the amendment approved may have some serious consequences. Both the entertainment industries and people on the pro-filesharing side have already called for the resignation of Ángeles González-Sinde. Article from: TorrentFreak. |
In the last three years, What.CD has not only built a million torrent music collection, but the team has also | 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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