TorrentFreak Email Update

Humble Indie Bundle 2 Embraces BitTorrent

Posted: 24 Dec 2010 02:30 AM PST

Offering $85 worth of games for a price set by the buyer, Wolfire's Humble Indie Bundle 2 pack has brought in more than $1.6 million since its launch. Inevitably, some people are using unofficial channels to acquire it and of course, BitTorrent is high on the list. After reaching out to pirates for information, Wolfire co-founder Jeffrey Rosen says the problem is real easy to fix. BitTorrent, here we come.

Just in time for the Christmas holidays, the guys who brought us the Humble Indie Bundle have done it again. With their latest game pack, called simply Humble Indie Bundle 2, Wolfire Games are capturing imaginations.

Their pay-what-you-want model is proving very popular with customers, especially when the funds go not only to indie developers but the EFF and the Child’s Play charity.

At the time of writing the pack has received 211,641 orders which have generated more than $1.6m, an average price of $7.68. Currently, anyone paying over this average amount will also get a free gift – Humble Indie Bundle 1.

HIB2

But inevitably, HIB2 has ended up becoming available through unofficial channels and naturally those include BitTorrent. Just last week a reader wrote to us explaining that users of Demonoid were getting rather upset that the pack was available there, even though its possible to get it for virtually nothing through the official sources.

The fact that BitTorrent was being used to distribute HIB2 didn’t go unnoticed by Wolfire Games either, and on Dec 19th co-founder Jeffrey Rosen tweeted: “If you pirated the Humble Indie Bundle, please tell me why in this anonymous survey.”

Even the tone of the survey shows why people have become so protective over HIB and HIB2. “This is an anonymous survey to try to understand why you pirated the Humble Indie Bundle and what we could have done better,” it says, humbly. No angry finger pointing here, just a willingness to listen. Just how business should be done.

Jeff told TorrentFreak this morning that he had several hundred responses back.

“One of the response types was ‘I just like BitTorrent’. For instance, they have a poor internet connection and can’t sustain a direct download, or more simply, they just hate downloading things in their browser and then having to md5sum it, etc,” he explained.

Indeed, the most common search autocomplete for the Humble Indie Bundle on Google is “Humble Indie Bundle torrent”, not surprising really since for those already familiar with the protocol, BitTorrent is an extremely convenient way to transfer files.

Would you prefer to get HIB2 using BitTorrent? You got it.

“I just added a BitTorrent download option in addition to our direct CDN downloads,” Jeff told us. “The BitTorrent files include the new web-seed feature pointing to our CDN, so even if there are no seeders, people still get fast download speeds.”

Jeff says customers have really taken to the new distribution method.

“I added this about 20 minutes ago, and so far the response has been phenomenal. Everyone is happy about it and we’ve already gotten hundreds of people donating their bandwidth to help seed it.”

Of course, the benefits of using BitTorrent don’t stop with the customer, Wolfire Games are saving money too.

“We are going to reduce our bandwidth costs dramatically because of this while providing better service and faster speeds,” Jeffrey concludes

Wolfire Games really have got it absolutely right with both their attitude and their HIB2 offering. We wish them every success and ask our readers who are interested in the game pack to donate a few dollars and get it here.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Court Dismisses ShareConnector Case Citing Faulty Evidence

Posted: 23 Dec 2010 12:32 PM PST

After six years, the criminal proceedings against P2P index site ShareConnector have finally come to an end, much to the embarrassment of the Dutch Department of Justice. The Court dismissed the case and ruled that the Public Prosecutor relied too much on evidence provided by anti-piracy outfit BREIN, and failed to do a proper investigation of its own.

In the early 2000s, ShareConnector was one of the largest P2P index sites, but this status came to an abrupt end when it was raided in 2004. Since then the operator of the site has been going through various legal battles, of both civil and criminal nature.

In the criminal case the operator of ShareConnector, aDi, came out as the winner in 2007 and was released from all charges. However, the Department of Justice decided to appeal the case two years later and charged aDi and six other admins with membership of a criminal organization and assisting in the distribution of copyrighted material.

However, instead of getting a conviction this time around the case turned into a total embarrassment for the Department of Justice. Last summer the court decided to reopen the case and summoned the public prosecutor as it doubted the legitimacy of the criminal prosecution which relied on evidence brought in by local anti-piracy outfit BREIN.

Yesterday the lengthy court battle came to an end with the Court of The Hague dismissing the case (Dutch).

The Court concluded that the authorities failed to provide any evidence to prove ShareConnector was involved in mass copyright infringement, nor enough to prove that it was criminal in nature. In addition, the judge ruled that the initial arrests were unlawful as the evidence provided by BREIN was insufficient.

SharecConnector

shareconnector

The Court ruled that the public prosecutor should have conducted an independent investigation instead of relying blindly on the ‘evidence’ provided by BREIN. Since this didn’t happen, the evidence used in the case was seen as illegitimate.

“It’s incredible that it took the court six years and numerous trials to conclude that the allegations from BREIN should not be taken seriously. It was a setup from the very beginning since the deaf from BREIN didn’t want to play clean and instead used the blind dogs from the Department of Justice,” aDi told TorrentFreak in a response. “This is a victory,” he added, “for now and for the future.”

In a response to the dismissed case BREIN’s head Tim Kuik came out with a statement emphasizing that ShareConnector itself was found to be an unlawful service.

BREIN won their civil case against the site in March this year. In that case the court ruled that the operator of ShareConnector wasn't guilty of copyright infringement, but that the site must remain closed for good since it facilitated copyright infringement.

The ShareConnector case touches on a recurring topic in file-sharing related investigations – the close cooperation between private anti-piracy groups and judicial authorities. When an arrest is made or a raid is carried out, the police are often assisted by members of the local anti-piracy lobby group.

It sometimes appears as if BREIN, MPAA, RIAA, BPI and others are part of the authorities, but in fact they have their own agenda and absolutely no reason to be neutral investigators. It’s good to see that the Court of The Hague spotted this illegitimate process in the ShareConnector case. The Department of Justice is not a puppet of anti-piracy outfits.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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Friday, December 24, 2010